thorns
by someofusare
Summary: All human AU. Rose Tyler leads an ordinary life as a shop girl, until she meets the Doctor. A rewrite of the first series of the new Who set on this planet as opposed to many. "How could this man, with his wide, happy smiles, be the same as the one that had such fire, or the one that sat in her flat, his eyes so pale and blank, his mouth a thin, heavy line?"
1. Werewolf

1.

"in a dream i was a werewolf, my soul was filled with crystal light" werewolf by cocorosie

Days always pass by far too slowly for Rose Tyler. When she was little, she thought that the sun moved on its own, that the earth was the one that stood still, and she always wondered how it switched sides in the morning from where it had set the night before. She had glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of her pink and yellow bedroom, and she used to make up her own constellations, placing each cheap sticker with so much care on the blue paint. Now she knows that it is her that is moving. The universe has better things to do than preoccupy itself with the ridiculous ideas of a precocious little girl on a small planet in a huge solar system in a vast galaxy in an impossibly immense existence with time, time that stupid humans presume to know and control, moving impossibly slowly, day after day, year after year, for forever. She can't believe she ever thought she was so important. She hasn't even got her A-levels.

At night, she still gazes out at the stars and pretends that she can make a dent in the universe like she always thought she could. The cold wind breezes through her window and one of many drunken teenagers stumbles out of the bar across the street from her and her mum's flat and vomits onto the sidewalk. London. Home, sweet home.

One night, when she is twenty, she dreams that she is the star and she is the wolf, the bad wolf, doomed to die in a burst of golden light, with eyes as brilliant and devastating as the sun. Her mother tells her to stop staying up so late and hurry or she'll be late for work. She walks slower than she normally does and gets yelled at by her boss for dilly-dallying.

The next night she meets Doctor John Smith, and everything changes.

* * *

The streetlights are particularly harsh when one has had too much to drink, especially when one is as much of a lightweight as Rose Tyler. During the course of the night she had managed to A. Kiss Mickey, best friend, not a good idea when he is halfway in love with her, B. Complain loudly about the lack of good music in the pub, C. When asked by Shireen what good music is fall off her chair instead of answer, and, perhaps most pathetically, D. Reconnect with Jimmy Stone, ex-boyfriend and friendly neighborhood arsehole.

Rose is reflecting on the irritating side effects of alcohol, specifically those pertaining to the increased brightness of street lamps when Jimmy's hands wander a little lower than she would like. He has her wedged between his body, which smells like smoke and bad cologne, and the brick walls of the alley by the bar.

For a minute Rose considers just giving in and letting him do whatever he wants with her. It would certainly be easier to do than fight him off in her current inebriated state. But for one perfect moment, as she reaches her hand to the wall behind her, she recalls her dream. She is the bad wolf, and she creates herself. And she begins to fight back.

"Get off!"

"What? I thought we were having fun." Jimmy bites down on her neck, hard enough to leave teeth marks.

"Not anymore, now let me go!" As she struggles ineffectually against the onslaught of his tongue and teeth, Rose suddenly thinks that maybe Jimmy won't listen, like he never listened to her pleas not to sleep with the groupies at his shows or her requests to stop gripping her wrists so hard, hard enough to leave bruises that her mum asked too many questions about. As this single terrifying thought enters her mind, Rose begins to fight harder to leave his embrace, but he has her pinned and oh god, his eyes are darker than ever, pupils too big for just lust, and she remembers needle marks on the inside crease of his elbow at night when the moon was brighter than she had ever seen. Jimmy is high and she is completely pissed and the brick wall is starting to hurt her back and she has no way out, from this situation or from her drab life as just another insignificant shop girl.

These thoughts all hit her with the force of a gale wind, and for a moment she can't breathe until all at once Jimmy's body is gone and replaced with only cold, empty space. Jimmy is being held up with one hand by a storm of grey leather and pale eyes.

"Run!" the storm calls out.

She does.

When she reaches the end of the alley and looks back at her savior, she can see him as he speaks to Jimmy, one leather-clad arm still holding the would-be rocker an inch off the ground. Whatever he says is apparently enough to make Jimmy look over at her with fear in his black eyes, and he backs away slowly until he is sprinting in the opposite direction.

The storm jogs over to her until he is standing a respectable distance away. He really does have the most beautiful eyes, she thinks.

"Are you okay?" He reaches his hand out as if to take her arm, but he seems to think better of it and drops it lamely back to his side.

"That was weird. He looked really ood. Odd. His face, I mean. It looked a bit like plastic, yeah?"

"What?"

Rose sways unsteadily, and promptly throws up all over the man's shoes.

* * *

When she wakes in the morning, Rose has a splitting headache. From where she is lying on her mother's horrendous floral couch, the one that reminds her of grandmothers and knitting, she can see that her shoes are on the wrong feet and her legs are covered in glitter. As she pulls herself into a half-sitting position, she feels a sudden rush of nausea. She groans, dropping her head into her hands.

"Serves you right," Jackie Tyler mutters from the kitchen, "waltzing in here in the dead of night with a strange man. 'Doctor John Smith' my arse."

Rose decides to ignore her mother's vague, rambling complaints and opts to make her way to the bathroom to clean herself up. When she returns, mascara smudged and hair tamed, Jackie has finished fixing up a hangover cure. Rose murmurs her thanks and plops down at the breakfast table. From her vantage point near the window, she can see someone picking up the rubbish from last night, beer bottles and cigarettes and one perfect pink high heel. The sight makes her inexplicably sad.

The silence is suddenly broken by a series of sharp knocks on the door of the flat. As Jackie trots to the door, Rose downs the rest of her mother's concoction and walks carefully over to the couch. The sleeves of her sweatshirt are a bit too long, and she grasps the ends with her fingers, a nervous habit she has always had. The pink material scratches against her skin, and she absentmindedly recalls that she was, in fact, taken back to her flat by the man from last night and that must be who her mum was referring to. John Smith. What an unfortunate name.

When Rose hears Jackie's loud screech followed by the sound of a slap and a quick succession of thumps on the floor, she thinks nothing of it. After all, when is Jackie not angry at people who knock at the door before nine? She has a very aggressive personality and claims that that's how she knows her dear Rose takes after Pete. Rose and her father are (or rather were, in Pete's case) both fairly passive and calm people.

"Stop it you mad woman! I just wanted to see if she's okay!"

"She's fine! We're fine! Now leave my home before I make you leave!"

The intruder, though, enters the sitting room of the flat and stands at the entrance, back straight and arms rigid. He glances at Rose, who is lying prone on the couch, picking at her blonde hair, and exits just as abruptly until he walks backwards into the room, this time holding up his rough hands in defense as Jackie shouts abuse. He stumbles slightly and lands awkwardly at the end of the flowery couch, near Rose's feet.

"What are you doing here? What do you want with my Rose?"

"Nothing. Never looking for anything, me. Just a doctor, making sure his patient got out alive."

Rose sits up and relaxes against the arm of the couch, picking at the fraying ends of her sweatshirt as she assesses the man opposite her. He is clearly avoiding her gaze, staring straight forward, head tilted upward just enough that he can't see the telly, which is currently running a program about pregnancies and paternity tests and bad accents. Jackie continues her verbal assault, matched in harmony with the (loud) conversation between a sixteen-year-old mother and her shit-for-brains boyfriend.

"I'm a doctor. Doctor John Smith, but just call me the Doctor. I can show you my card if you like."

Ah, so this is the man from last night. No wonder. Jackie always worries about the men that Rose takes home, even more so after the disaster that was Jimmy Stone. Rose faintly recognizes his face, but it isn't until he turns his head and fixes his eyes on hers that she can place him completely. It's difficult to forget eyes like that. Before she can remark on her realization, he turns his head back to her mother and hands her a small white paper. His card, she supposes.

"Doctor John Smith, like I said. Specializing in cardiovascular surgery. I work at the hospital nearby. I live in this neighborhood. I'm not a serial murderer. Ask anyone." As he speaks, his Adam's apple becomes more prominent, and she notices he hasn't shaved in a few days. His hair is cropped short, accentuating his big ears, and when his face relaxes in between sentences, he looks hopeless or afraid or wrong somehow, like his bones are too heavy for him to lift. It makes Rose unbearably sad for him, for the sake of a man who she barely knows.

"Doctor! You say you're a doctor, but why were you in a scummy alley so late at night? Says he saved her, he says, I say no, Rose knows better than to flounce around with that Jimmy bloke again and we don't need you here to check up on her thank you very much. Twice her age, and he's trying to get into my flat to see 'er!"

The Doctor (for she thinks the title suits him) glances at Rose nervously, silently pleading with her to tell her mother that yes, he did help out, and no, he's not a bad man who's trying to corrupt her, not like Jimmy did. His leather jacket is too big on his shoulders, and his shoes are the same ones from last night, poorly cleaned. They must be his only pair.

"Mum, what he's telling you is true. He's a nice man, jus' let 'im stay. He only wants to check up on me."

Jackie Tyler is visibly upset, shaking with fury in the way only a mother can, but the Doctor looks relieved and for some reason that matters more to Rose. She likes him, she decides.

"That doesn't explain what he was doing in that alley, and you know that no respectable man would be wandering through there at that time of night."

"Was just passing by. I'd just finished a double shift, my flat's a little ways from the pub. Don't like taking a cab. I heard her yelling, and I jus' wanted to see if everything was okay."

Jackie harrumphs once, then twice, then simply leaves the room, throwing behind her one "Doctor John Smith indeed."

For one minute everything is quiet, and Rose and the Doctor are sitting on the tacky couch miles away from each other, one in a flat in London and the other in outer space. Then all at once the Doctor stands, offers his apologies for intruding on her hospitality, and knocks over a table lamp in his haste to leave.

Rose can hear sirens pass by the building, and she wonders if the person inside will live or die. The loudest noise in the flat is the telly, blaring out an advert for breath mints. A fly buzzes clumsily around the ceiling fan, soon to be another insect corpse for the window sill. The phone rings, and she stands as if her bones were much too heavy. The rest of the day passes in a blur, slower than ever before.

* * *

A/N: This is my very first fanfic, so don't be too harsh. I've always wished there were more human doctor stories, so I'm taking it upon myself to write one. Also, I've only seen the first two series of the new Doctor Who and none of the old, so I won't be including that many references to the show. I've always loved the NineRose dynamic though, which is why I am writing this. So read and review and stuff. Go on.


	2. Animal

2.

"in your eyes i see the eyes of somebody i knew before long long long ago. but i'm still trying to make my mind up, am i free or am i tied up?" animal by sky ferreira

Rose has a necklace that her dad bought for her before he died. The chain is light and gold, each link as delicate as lace, the pendant settling softly just below the hallow of her throat. Rose doesn't know when he got it, only that it was in his jacket pocket at the scene of the crash, untouched by the blood that stained his white skin. Rose was only a baby then, gurgling in a high chair as her mother's life came crashing down around her ears. The necklace is simple, only just a little round locket with a picture of a rose in the frame next to the engraved words, "For my dear Rose. Much love." Jackie insisted on waiting until Rose's thirteenth birthday before granting her the present and telling her the story of Pete's death. Three years later, when she ran off with Jimmy, she could still see the necklace on the bedside table as he took everything she had.

Every day Rose drapes the necklace carefully over her collarbone, remembering her father as best she can. The gravel of his voice, the crinkles near his eyes, the callouses on his hands. The little things she can remember, though, are as blurred as the sky when it snows, the cold as biting as knives.

The morning after Rose meets the Doctor, she wakes up, goes to work, folds shirts that she can never have enough money to buy, and goes home. Jackie wants to make ravioli for dinner (never a good idea, but sometimes Rose must humour her mother), so she sends Rose to the supermarket with a stack of coupons and a tenner.

As she waits for the chip and PIN machine to process a box of ravioli and a jar of marinara, she idly twirls her necklace around her fingers until suddenly, she feels something give. Pulling her hand away from her throat, Rose can see that the chain snapped, right near the clasp. When she takes one end of the metal strand in her hands, the locket slips easily off the edge and clatters to the ground. Broken. Her father's last gift, and she has managed to fuck it up.

Rose can feel her eyes filling with tears as she quickly scoops the jewelry off the ground, and she finishes checking out, hands shaking. What will she tell her mum? _Sorry, remember that last thing that dad ever gave us? Yeah, I ruined it, jus' like I ruin everything else._ Before she can reach the front exit of the store though, a tall man with dark brown hair who was standing behind her in line stops her.

"Woah there, miss, you dropped something," he says with an American accent. The man smiles, charming and sweet, before handing her a one pound note she dropped in her haste to get home.

"Um, yeah, thanks." She hears her voice tremble and quickly maneuvers around him in her haste to get away.

"Hey, sweetheart, why are you crying? Did you break your necklace there?" Rose nods her answer as more tears well in her eyes. She is crying in the middle of a supermarket holding a box of dry pasta and isn't that just grand? "Look, hold on, stay right here."

Rose waits as the man half-runs back over to one of the grocery store aisles, pausing to look back at her and hold up one hand in a "wait right there" gesture. She wonders what exactly this very handsome American is planning on doing to help her. She suspects his motivations may have to do more with her looks than any real desire to assist a crying girl. When he emerges from the aisle pulling along his very disgruntled looking friend, Rose can hardly believe it. They have been living in the same neighborhood for years and never met, yet Rose has now seen John Smith two times in as many days. Apparently the Doctor is just as surprised because when his American friend brings him over all he can do is stare stupidly at her face.

"Doctor, this lovely young lady accidentally snapped the chain on her necklace, and I wanted to help her out. I don't know my way around this area, but I'm sure you can find us a jewelry store." The man looks expectantly at the Doctor, before noticing the obvious. "Oh, you two know each other, don't you?"

The Doctor nods and grins, a wide, manic smile unlike anything that Rose has ever seen. "We met once recently. Nice to see you again, Rose Tyler. This here is one of my old friends, Captain Jack Harkness."

Jack preens as Rose looks suitably impressed. "Captain?"

He shrugs, one hand circling the air lazily. "It's an old nickname."

"From university," the Doctor supplies, "we met when he tried to hit on one of my friends."

"Really? What was her name?"

"His name was Adam," Jack says dreamily, "and he was gorgeous."

"Jack here tends to want anyone, as long as they're breathing." Rose laughs, perhaps a little shakily, but she feels lighter somehow. When she clenches her fist, though, and traces the cool metal with her forefinger, she remembers the reason that she is even speaking to the Doctor and the Captain (_what odd nicknames_, she thinks).

The Doctor notices her change in expression and remembers too. "Here, let me have a look at the damage." He gently takes the chain and locket in his big hands and carefully inspects the break. "I know a man who can fix this, he works jus' a bit away. We can walk over there now and he can fix the link an' have it ready for you good as new in a few minutes."

"Great. How does that sound, Miss Tyler?"

Rose glances back and forth between the two men. "Good, yeah."

* * *

"Why does everyone call you the Doctor?" He stops his inspection of the diamond necklace beneath the glass and turns to face Rose. The shop he had taken her and Jack to is one of those one man shows where everything is hand-made and the room seems like a little labyrinth in itself. Despite being a jeweler's, the walls are covered in old books and original paintings, ones that are splattered and dashed with acrylics to the point that Rose can feel the energy of the movement vibrating off the canvas.

The Doctor laughs, glancing at her sideways with a glint of something (Rose can't quite place what) in his eyes. "Like Jack said, it was an old nickname that just stuck."

"Yeah, why did Jack go to uni in England?"

"His family has a history of attending Oxford, they're one of those prestigious, old money types of people. We've been mates for years, even though he moved back to the states. He's visiting for two weeks on business."

"What business?"

"I'm an attorney," Jack explains, coming up to them from where he was standing near the register, "I'm working with our international partners here in England. Couldn't you just tell I was a lawyer, with my amazing charm and wit?"

"No, she could tell by your slime."

"Bugger off, mate," Jack replies in his best Doctor imitation. "The necklace is fixed, my dear, good as new."

"Thank you so much, Doctor. And Captain." Rose turns to leave them to their own devices before having a thought. She weighs it in her mind, trying to determine whether or not Jackie would explode with anger before realizing that she doesn't really care. "Would you two like to join us for dinner?"

The Doctor sends Jack a meaningful look even as Jack says, "No, I can't, got a date with an old girlfriend. But the Doc here is free."

The Doctor looks a little uncomfortable, and Rose can practically see the cogs turning over in his head. But suddenly he doesn't look nervous at all, and gives her another one of his wide smiles. "That'll be fantastic, Rose. Absolutely fantastic."

As Jack pays the jeweler ("No, really, I insist") and walks in the opposite direction ("I'll see you in the morning, Doc, and hopefully I will see you again very soon, Miss Rose Tyler"), Rose and the Doctor are left alone, walking back to Rose's flat. The sky is an abnormal shade of blue-grey and Rose decides that it perfectly matches his eyes.

"So you never told me how you got that nickname." Rose watches the Doctor's face expectantly as she waits for an answer. For a split second, so quick that Rose doesn't quite believe it happened at all, his features contort into a vision of something akin to heartbreaking grief before smoothing over into careful neutrality.

"Jack was pre-law while I was pre-med. We were both pretty idealistic in those days, we had this grand vision of how we could save the world. People started calling me _the_ Doctor, the one who would save mankind, cure cancer, all that bullocks, and Jack was Captain America, which was later just shortened to Captain. Jack never stopped calling me the Doctor, and eventually everyone started calling me that. Plus, I never liked the name John Smith."

Rose laughs, the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth, an odd quirk that Mickey always teases her for. Rose thinks she sees the Doctor's eyes dart toward her mouth before deciding that he can't have been doing that. "'S better than a number."

"Might as well be, it's got no panache, no style. I might as well be Number Forty-Two or Number Nine. Rose Tyler, now there's a name."

"Oh, you're so full of it! You just like the nickname, you just think you're so impressive."

"I am so impressive!"

"Right, Doctor, now that there explains your tendency to rescue the damsel in distress."

"Oh, I would hardly call you a damsel in distress. You fight pretty well for such a little thing."

"Only 'cause you're tall. I am perfectly average, thank you very much." Rose continues to kick her feet along the sidewalk, her white trainers catching in a few cracks before Rose rights herself. "Do you have another pair of shoes?"

"What do you mean?" the Doctor questions worriedly. "What's wrong with these?"

"Nothing. They're just the same ones I threw up on. Don't you have another set?"

"Miss Tyler, I'll have you know that I have gotten all sorts of things on these shoes. They're my favorites, an' I'm not getting rid of them just because you can't hold your liquor."

"I'm not saying you should get rid of them, I'm just saying you could get another pair. Shoes are very important, I'll have you know."

"How are _shoes_ important?"

"Shoes make you feel different. I wear these to work, an' I don't feel anything. I look just like everyone else. But if I could wear those," Rose points to a pair of glittery gold stilettos in a shop window, the expensive kind that Jackie always looks at wistfully whenever she takes Rose shopping, "I'd feel special. Look at them, all shiny and new. What you wear is who you are, an' don't you think you're better than a ratty old pair of black boots?"

The Doctor blinks at her for a second before smiling once again. "Rose Tyler. You are clever. I dunno why I didn't see it right away."

"I don't know either," Rose replies, returning his smile with one of her own. She leads him up the front steps of her building to the door, which is an odd shade of blue that she has never seen anywhere else and which will always remind her of home.

"Just one question." Rose looks up at the Doctor, who is staring down at her like she is a riddle that he can't quite solve yet. "Don't you think you're better than an old pair of white trainers?"

* * *

Jackie does not explode, although she comes pretty close. After brandishing a wooden spoon dangerously close to the Doctor's head, Jackie agrees that perhaps he is a decent enough person to be invited to dinner. The meal is slightly awkward, but Rose somehow manages to keep her mother in line (although she has no idea how she does that). The Doctor comments on Rose's preference for the color pink coming from her mother, who is wearing pink sweatpants and chipping pink nail polish. Rose grins. Jackie glares.

"So," Jackie says after everyone has finished eating (far too casually, in Rose's opinion), "how old are you then, _John_?"

Rose narrowly avoiding choking on her own breath, while the Doctor only looks mildly put out at the turn the conversation has taken. Rose could tell that he had been hoping to avoid Jackie's inquisition about what exactly his intentions are with her daughter anyway? and somehow he has been sucked into it anyway.

"Mum, he's not-"

"I'm thirty-eight. From Manchester, originally. Went to uni at Oxford and became a surgeon, as I've told you a few times. I moved here about five years ago. I'm not planning on seducing and ruining your daughter for all the eligible young bachelors in London. When Rose was showing me back to her flat the other night, she told me all about her almost-boyfriend Rickey-"

"Mickey-"

"An' I know she's just being polite to a tired old man who doesn't have anyone to eat dinner with, so don't fret. We'll be grand friends once you get to know me, I'm sure, Mrs. Tyler. What do you say? Truce?"

Rose glances nervously from the Doctor's expression of total confidence to her mother's face, which is somewhere between angry and impressed. Jackie eventually seems to decide on impressed, and Rose breathes a sigh of relief while the Doctor just looks smug. He winks at her when Jackie turns her head in the other direction, and Rose suddenly knows that he will be the death of her. The noise that made Jackie face the window repeats, and Rose looks toward the sound. A blackbird, small and thin, settles on the concrete outside the glass, ruffling it's feathers and spreading its wings as it opens its throat to sing.

When the Doctor has thoroughly charmed her mother and stands at the door to leave, pulling his leather coat on over his jumper once again (_he looks almost naked without it_, Rose thinks to herself), Rose realizes that she can barely recall the livid expression on his face when he pulled Jimmy off of her. How could this man, with his wide, happy smiles, be the same as the one that had such fire, or the one that sat in her flat, his eyes so pale and blank, his mouth a thin, heavy line?

"Rose?"

"Yeah?"

"Before I go, I wanted to know if you wanted to come out with me an' Jack? He's looking to do all the crap tourist attractions all over again before he leaves London, and he needs a real local to show him around, 'f you're interested."

"Really?" Rose responds cheekily. She likes watching the Doctor squirm. "Where would I be taking him?"

"Anywhere you want. I don't really mind where. It's your choice, really."

"Hmm. Sounds good, yeah."

"Fantastic! I'll be seeing you, Rose. Have a good night."

"G'night." Rose carefully locks the door behind the Doctor as he skips cheerfully away from her flat before panicking just the teeniest bit. What exactly has she gotten herself into?

In her room, after she has changed into her purple pajamas, she looks wistfully at the stars on her ceiling. If only she could live on a star, in a box the color of her door so she never misses home, and with someone there to take her to see the universe.

Her bedside table groans under the weight of too many books and movies and knick knacks from different places her friends have traveled to. A miniature Eiffel tower from Shireen, a Statue of Liberty from Angie, a little kilted figurine from when Mickey went visiting family in Glasgow. A book about the ocean from when she was five, an astronomy book from her grandad. Her favorite, _Daddy-Long-Legs_, sits on top of the pile, its spine faded and bent from overuse. Rose takes off her necklace and runs her nails along where the chain broke. She falls asleep and can remember her father's hands, all rough and worn.

* * *

A/N: I know I made the Doctor younger than Eccleston actually was at the time, and Rose is older than she should be but age differences of 20+ years are a bit difficult to work around when neither party is an alien. I figured an 18 year difference was appropriately taboo so forgive me pretty please. Know that more character development is coming soon (as well as dramatic backstories, _dun dun dun_). As you may have guessed, read and review, and I will be working on another chapter for you party people for the coming week. I'll be trying to get one out every week, although I'm sure all you lovely readers know that sometimes that's not possible. So thank you to all who reviewed and stuck with this story until chapter 2. You are all absolutely fabu (ha haha you thought I was gonna say fantastic).

Also bonus points to everyone who has read _Daddy-Long-Legs_ by Jean Webster and knows why I used it as Rose's favorite book. For those who don't, go read it, it's super quick and sweet and happy.

Also bonus bonus points to everyone who saw the Maya Angelou reference. Poetry readers unite.


	3. Yellow

3.

"your skin, yeah your skin and bones turn into something beautiful. do you know for you i bleed myself dry?" yellow by coldplay

Despite living in London her whole life, Rose has never been in the London Eye or visited the British Museum, so she opts to begin her tour with those two places. Jack is appropriately impressed, and the Doctor enjoys showing off his knowledge of the places they visit.

"Rose, did you know that the London Eye is not actually a ferris wheel? It's an observation wheel." (to which Jack replies, "Bored.")

"Rose, did you know that owning these artefacts is actually considered stealing by the Greeks? Only America owns them legally." (to which Jack replies, "Suck it, Doc.")

"Rose, did you know that we've lost Jack?" (to which Jack doesn't reply to until thirty minutes later when he explains, "I was just showing a lovely young woman where the upstairs bathrooms are.")

The Doctor moves from place to place like a child, bouncing on his feet and swinging his great arms like wrecking balls, while Jack trails behind serenely, sometimes pausing to inspect an object more thoroughly. Rose stands in each room, gazing at Michelangelo's sketches, and then Chinese jade, and then ancient Aztec bowls. All of them revealing places and times she has never been, but the evidence of them sits, fixed and motionless, in front of her eyes.

She receives a pamphlet advertising for a World War II exhibit showing soon, with horrible pictures on it of smoke and death and gas masks. She remembers her grandad's stories from when she was little about his family hiding in the basement and praying the alarms were wrong. She suppresses a shiver and steps outside to breath in the fresh air, if only to remind herself that she still can.

The museum takes up most of the afternoon, but the Doctor promises that he will take Rose and Jack ("Just like in _Titanic_!" Jack points out excitedly) to a proper art gallery or book reading or concert and show them the very best London has to offer in terms of culture, not just history (Rose is excited, as she has always liked art, likes how it tells a story that words can't). Jack insists that Rose will have to show him the best nightlife as the Doctor sends murderous glares to the back of Jack's head and Rose nods happily. She and Jack get along better than she and the Doctor, although, truth be told, she likes the Doctor more.

When she and Jack and the Doctor stumble back into Rose's flat in the early evening, Jackie does not look as surprised as she had a couple of nights ago. Rose introduces Jack as "the Doctor's friend" and Jackie is certainly more easily charmed, with his sharp accent and marble smile.

The Doctor leaves after Jack does, kissing the top of her hand with a flourish and promising to come around the next day. Rose blushes like she's fourteen again and would be embarrassed if the Doctor were the type to make someone feel embarrassed. She falls asleep more quickly than she has in years and doesn't have any dreams at all.

* * *

Jack and the Doctor and Rose spend the next week and a half traveling around the city to wherever Rose suggests. The Doctor ends up taking them to an art show, titled "A Thousand Ways to Go," all the paintings of different world endings. Rose and Jack drag the Doctor to a club at the end of the first week, and though he refuses to dance, he looks on fondly at the two when they are on the floor.

Rose discovers that Jack and the Doctor are the best kind of friends, easy to talk to and never trying to force her to do anything she doesn't want to do.

One day, they spend their entire afternoon watching old black and white movies, ones that Rose has never seen, just because she happens to mention to Jack that she doesn't know who Cary Grant is. Rose wonders aloud what it would be like to live in the 1930s, if she would speak as quickly as all the characters seem to. Jack and the Doctor spend twenty minutes teaching her how to talk that fast as a result.

"No, no, she's supposed to be talking like this! Sharp, like me, see?." Jack crows even as Rose laughs helplessly on the ground.

"She's not a bleeding American, Jack, she has to talk more like me, see?"

"Yeah, Jack, I'm not a bleeding American, I have to talk more like the Doctor, see?"

Rose attempts to introduce Mickey to the Doctor, but the conversation only lasts five minutes before Mickey fetches Rose and asks her to rescue him.

"What's so wrong with 'im?"

"He told me my name wasn't really Mickey. And then called me 'Ricky' for the rest of the conversation."

Shireen's introduction goes over a little too smoothly, as she spends most of it ogling the Doctor.

(Rose attempts to communicate her anger telepathically, but Shireen doesn't notice. She makes a note to keep the Doctor away from her, as she knows that Shireen has a habit of going through men like they're going out of style.)

Rose never asks to visit the Doctor's flat. She somehow understands that letting her see his home would have to be saved for another time. Despite the fact that she still doesn't know his story, she can tell that it's not going to be a happy one.

She never tells him why the necklace was so important. (She thinks he might already know, might already see right through her. Sometimes when she plays with the chain he smiles at her sympathetically and takes her hand.)

That week is the week that the winter turns to spring, the rain misting through the streets like a ghost, the birds constantly flying overhead.

* * *

Jack still has to finish work on a Sunday when he is supposed to meet Rose and the Doctor, so they are left to have lunch by themselves. They eat at a little deli near Rose's flat, and though he insists he's doesn't want them Rose still catches the Doctor stealing some of her chips when he thinks she isn't looking.

"So," Rose begins, "what do you think Jack wants to do for his last day?"

"Dunno. It's hard to tell with someone like him. He's up for just about anything. What were you thinking of doing?"

"Nothing, actually. Maybe we should just ask Jack when he gets back."

"Sounds fine by me." The Doctor stops trying to be sneaky and lifts half of her chips out of the plastic bowl and arranges them on his napkins.

"Doctor!"

"I'm hungry!"

"Then you should've gotten your own food!"

"Oh, sod off. I deserve these, I save people for a living, damn it!"

"You're so ridiculous." Rose smiles at the Doctor, happy to see that he is grinning at her in return. "What's that book in your jacket?"

"Oh, this?" The Doctor pats his chest fondly. "You saw that? It's just some T. S. Eliot. I was reading it earlier today."

Rose scrunches her nose, not quite sure how to proceed. "He did poetry, yeah?"

"Yeah!" The Doctor looks unbearably excited, so happy to be able to talk to Rose about this. She feels sick to her stomach, like she feels guilty for disappointing him.

"I never actually read it. Maybe once in school, but I can't remember. Actually, if we did read it I probably wasn't paying attention. I never really understood poetry."

"You never read Eliot?" Rose nods, feeling for certain that he'll see how uneducated she is, how she isn't worth his time after all. She remembers Jimmy laughing at her when she didn't know any songs by the Sex Pistols, when she had never even heard of Iggy and the Stooges. "Well, get up. We're taking you to the library. You done with your chips?"

"Um, yeah. The library? You're not mad?"

"Why on earth would I be mad at you for not knowing something? It means I get to show off all my brilliance. Since it's an off day, we're going to have a seminar on the importance of poetry and how to understand what the bloody hell it actually means. Come on, Rose Tyler. I'll race you." The Doctor jumps from his chair, running out of the door and causing an old couple to shake their heads angrily at his antics. Rose laughs and runs after him.

She can see his leather jacket ahead of her, and pushes herself to catch up with him. The people stream past in a blur, all of them with confused expressions on their faces about why she and the Doctor are running for apparently no reason. Rose can see the trees along the sidewalk are in bloom, their flower petals littering the concrete, the branches reaching toward the sky like fingers. She takes his hand with hers just as he slows, stopping in front of an elaborately decorated building. He threads their fingers together even as he says in wonderment, "It's a Baroque design. Wasn't built too long ago, but the architect wanted to make people think of a different time when they came here. I guess it worked." He leads her up the stairs, leaning against the heavy door with his full weight to open it.

The Doctor takes them to an alcove on the second floor, one untouched by sound. The arched windows take up the entire wall, allowing for a perfect view of the city. Rose can see a man and a woman climbing into a taxi, their clothes expensive and fine, can see a child skipping between his parents as they smile at each other over his head. The sunlight streams through, as it is an unnaturally bright day, lighting the swirling dust around her head as if it were something otherworldly.

"You chose a good day to tell me about your lack of poetic knowledge, there's practically no one here." He settles across from her on the floor, leaning his head against the book shelf behind him as she does the same. "Okay, here's the plan: I'm going to get you the works of as many great poets as I can think of, ones that you absolutely need to know, and I'll take you through them as much as I can. If we have any time, I can show you other books you should read. We'll get you set up for a library card when we leave. Sound good?"

Rose nods, and the Doctor jumps up from his position on the ground and scampers off to find his books. The particles of dust where he was sitting jump haphazardly in the wake of his movement, and Rose realizes suddenly that the Doctor has taken them to the astronomy section. She crawls carefully over to the shelf opposite her, pulling out a book covered in stars and flipping it open to the middle. She locates the section on constellations and amuses herself with the pictures and explanations until the Doctor appears in front of her, dropping an armful of books onto the floor between them.

"You like astronomy?"

"Yeah. My grandad used to take me camping, show me the constellations. I have all his old books at home."

"That's-"

"Unexpected?"

"Fantastic! My favorite one is Orion. It's the only one that I can always recognize." He leans down to pick up one of the heaviest books. "Okay, first things first. Shakespeare. We can skip _Beowulf _because it's boring."

Rose quickly discovers that with the Doctor narrating her progress, she actually enjoys reading. He takes her through the basics of Shakespeare, teaches her how to dissect a sonnet, how to understand the language as best she can. After that introduction, she breezes through Jonson, Pope, Donne, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and others after them that she can barely remember the names of, shocked to find that she is able to understand in ways she never seemed to be able to in school. Every time she has that moment of perfect clarity over a particularly difficult line, the Doctor gives her one of his brilliant smiles.

When he reads to her from the books, his Northern accent bending and smoothing on the words, she understands why everyone always thinks that poetry is something special. After a few hours of reciting and explaining, his voice turns hoarse, and she reads to him.

By the time she gets to the modern poets, where she learns T. S. Eliot and e. e. cummings and W. H. Auden (she wonders why none of them wanted anyone to know their names), she's pacing back and forth along the window, gazing down at the bright lights of the city with wonder. She points out the names of the constellations and stars she can see to the Doctor as she reads.

"'I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;  
I know the voices dying with a dying fall  
Beneath the music from a farther room.  
So how should I presume?'"

"'how much more than enough for both of us  
darling. And if i sing you are my voice,'  
Look, Doctor, that's Aries. Can't believe it's spring already."

"'I'll love you dear, I'll love you  
Till China and Africa meet,  
And the river jumps over the mountain  
And the salmon sing in the street,'  
now, what exactly does that mean?"

The Doctor stops her after she finishes "As I Walked Out One Evening" so that he can go pick up more of his favorites. Rose finds that she likes the modern era and attempts to write poetry in her head until realizing that she's terrible at description and rhyming.

He returns with other books, explaining to her excitedly that she can hear his favorites now that she has the basics. "William Carlos Williams! That's a worse name than John Smith, don't you think? And Pablo Neruda, now he had some outstanding sonnets. They're better when you read them in Spanish, but since you can't speak it we'll hold off on the original text. And Louise Glück and Percy Shelley and Charles Bukowski and this isn't a poem but every young lady should read _Jane Eyre_ so that's your homework assignment for the week. Read this one next." He flips through one of the books until he finds the section he wants and pokes at it excitedly.

Rose runs her fingers along the spine of the book he hands her, tracing the raised letters with her nail. "Why do you know so much about poetry? Aren't you more of a science-y bloke?"

The Doctor settles his long legs beneath his body as he sits, turning his head toward the window so that Rose can only see his profile. "I'm a doctor, yeah. I was always better at science in school, biology and chemistry and physics. But I always loved poetry an' art an' music, even if I could never do it myself. I think it's important, you know? I think people need it."

Rose watches the Doctor's face as he speaks, the movement of his neck, the flicker of his eyelashes. The way he is looking out of the window, his profile illuminated by the city lights, makes him look like some sort of statue, as hard and magnificent as marble.

She clears her throat and points to the night sky. "That there's Arcturus. It's the fourth brightest star, not quite as good as Sirius. Was always my favorite. I like how hard it tries."

When she gazes down again at the book, she can feel the Doctor's eyes on her even as she speaks.

"'You lethargic, waiting upon me, waiting for  
the fire and I  
attendent upon you, shaken by your beauty  
Shaken by your beauty.  
Shaken.'"

When she looks up, the Doctor is staring at her with something like awe in his eyes. He blinks once, then twice, then gives her a wide grin. "I think they're closing in a minute, so maybe we should jus' borrow the rest? We'll come back soon, and you can show me the rest of your constellations." He gathers the books on the floor in front of him, piling them with smooth efficiency on top on his right arm. With his left, he grabs Rose's hand, leading her away from the window.

"Hold on, I just want to show you one more." Rose pulls the Doctor more firmly to her side, careful not to lose her grip on his hand. It feels calloused and rough and impossibly old, and Rose wonders what he must have done to earn such battle scars since they certainly aren't the hands of a surgeon. She points to a final set of stars with their entwined fingers so that the Doctor can be sure to see them. "See that set, yeah? It's dim, but that's the Lynx constellation. I found out about it when I was just a kid, my grandad showed it to me. Said that I had to have the eyes of a lynx to see it, anyhow. That's how it got its name. It takes three billion years to orbit the Milky Way, can you imagine? We're not even a blip on its radar. It's ancient."

The Doctor brings their hands slowly down again and, even as he gazes at her, says quietly, "I see it." He squeezes her fingers once, then pulls her along to leave.

The walk home is silent, but Rose thinks that perhaps it's the good kind of silent. She tries her best to read in the dark, even as the Doctor leans his head back to look at the sky. He never once lets go of her hand.

The flowers on the window sill in Rose's bedroom are beginning to open, their yellow petals unfurling like they are just starting to wake up.

* * *

A/N: I haven't actually been to London or the British Museum so if I get any information on the city or the exhibits or the constellations visible from the city wrong tell me so I can correct it. Plus, that thing about Greek artifacts is true, the Greek tour guide I had was super aggressive about it. Also, any songs I use at the beginning of the chapters are songs you should listen to, with the chapter or without because they are all fabulous songs (one note: listen to "Spiegel im Spiegel" by Arvo Pärt for the library scene. It's perfect). Thank you for hanging around until chapter 3 and review please, I want to impress all you amazing people.

Part of the reason I have so many poets listed is because they're all people I recommend. Besides that, I know the eighth doctor was big into poetry, so I figured that this version would probably still have some love for it. If all of the references bothered you, sorry about that. I wanted to include them to give a better sense of the Doctor's personality.


	4. Stars

4.

"patience and light, the world is in your eyes. we're holding onto the stars to keep this off the ground." stars by ben riddle

When Rose was younger, in the midst her petty teenage rebellion, she used to turn up the volume on her CD player all the way and blast angry girl rock until she couldn't hear her mother's shrill voice asking her to stop, to talk to her, to _just listen for one minute_. She has since learned that using headphones and an iPod is a much more efficient way to listen to music, which she does whenever she is working on a project (like redecorating her room or sorting through her clothes).

Rose has always liked drawing and painting and making little clay sculptures. On her seventeenth birthday, a month after she came home from running away, her mother got her an expensive sketchbook, the kind with thick, creamy white paper, and an easel for her canvases. Rose likes to turn up her music full blast and just go, painting whatever she wants to on that day. Her favorite subject is space, and most of her notebooks from school are lined with her little doodles of nebulae and supernovas.

The morning when she is supposed to meet Jack and the Doctor the day before Jack leaves, she is sitting at her chair, lathering acrylics onto her brush as she adds detail to the wings of her subject. She is immensely grateful to the Doctor for showing her all that literature, because she now has many more ideas about what to paint. She finds that birds are one of her new favorites, since they offer a shocking number of creative possibilities.

She sings quietly along to the song playing, amused to realize that she's listening to "Space Oddity" by David Bowie (she hates to admit that Jimmy was ever right, but he has fantastic taste in music). With the music playing so loud, she fails to notice the Doctor poking his head into her room until he speaks.

"Rose Tyler!"

She shrieks, jumping up to grab the baseball bat next to her desk. She shakes the weapon angrily at the door until realizing that the intruder is only the Doctor. She huffs angrily at him, setting the bat down again. "Jesus, Doctor, you scared me half to death! How did you even get in here?"

"Jackie let me in. I think she's finally starting to like me."

Rose laughs lightly. "Never think that. She doesn't like anyone." She picks up her brush from where she dropped it on the floor and sets in gently back in the water cup. "What are you doing here anyway?"

"Jack knows what he wants to do for his last day! Apparently, there's some sort of banquet and Jack's been invited because one of his clients knows the host. He asked if he could bring some friends, and they said yeah! So we're going to a ball! Isn't that exciting?" He grins at her brightly, and Rose can't help but grin in return.

"That sounds fun. But I don't really have anything to wear to a ball. An' I can't just go out and buy something that fancy."

"No problem, Jack and I will take you shopping. A young woman like you needs one good gown, don't you think?"

Rose's smile is wider than normal, the tip of her pink tongue poking out between her teeth. A real ball. Just like Cinderella. She's suddenly immensely glad that she met the Doctor, more so than usual.

"I'm going to a ball!" she yells, waving her hands in the air in victory and throwing her arms around the Doctor. He wraps his arms around her in a bone-crushing hug, laughing at her childlike enthusiasm.

"We have to go now, 'cause it's tomorrow an' this is an extremely important dress. Jack's waiting outside, we're gonna take you to the tailor he uses whenever he's in the city." He grabs her hand, making to lead her out the door before spinning on his heel and walking toward her desk. "I almost forgot." He walks around Rose's easel until he is facing the painting she was working on. He is speechless for one moment, until locking eyes with Rose and beaming. "Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic."

He grabs her hand and runs through the flat as Rose calls to Jackie, "Bye mum, I'm going out with the Doctor and Jack, I'll be back later, love you!" She laughs all the way to the car, grinning madly at Jack as he waves from the driver's seat.

"Alright, I guess I'm your chauffeur today," he grumbles as she and the Doctor settle into the backseat.

Rose glances around the interior of the rented car, totally unsurprised to find that it is unnecessarily extravagant. She glances down at the floor and then looks back at the Doctor with shock.

"You got new boots."

He shifts around in his seat as he says, "Yeah. D'you like them?" He makes a show of waggling his feet, doing a faux jig for Rose's benefit.

"I love them. Much better than the old pair."

"Oh, I'm keeping the old set. I jus' thought I could do with something new."

Rose chuckles at the Doctor's excitement, leaning her head against the cool glass window as she watches the city go by. She sings "Heroes" under her breath as she looks outside, tapping a rhythm on her legs as she does. When she hears the Doctor join in, and then Jack, she sings louder until they are all screaming the words in the little car. They get looks from the people next to them at the next red light, and Rose and the Doctor break into laughter as Jack asks loudly, "What is it?"

When the car is quiet again, Rose can hear a blackbird singing over the roar of the engine, it's voice straining above the white noise like a violin.

* * *

"Are you lot done yet?" the Doctor calls impatiently from the hallway as Rose twirls in her dress for one final check. She glances at Jack, who nods happily.

"Yeah, we're done, Doctor! Jus' one minute." Rose unzips the gown, careful not to disturb any of the beading. The one article of clothing costs more than she makes in a week, but Jack assured her that he will pay for anything she wants. She wonders why he's doing such a nice thing for her when he's only in town for one more day. She thinks that maybe he's just a genuinely kind and generous person, that maybe that's one of the reasons he and the Doctor are such good friends. She decides on that explanation as she hands him the dress once again outside of the fitting room.

"It'll be perfect. You look gorgeous in it," he assures her. "Plus, you get to see me in a tux, which is a bonus."

Rose snorts even as Jack brings them over to his tailor to pay. The Doctor waits outside of the shop, having walked two steps in, seeing all of the elaborate gowns, and walked right back out. Rose hopes that he can still appreciate the party despite not being very interested in fashion. Jack seems to enjoy it (although really, Jack seems to enjoy everything).

"You lot done then?" the Doctor asks upon their exit from the shop. "I still need to get lunch before my shift."

"You're not working tomorrow, are you?" Jack questions worriedly.

"No, I've got a double shift today, so I'm off tomorrow."

"What do you want to eat?"

"We can just get takeout back at my flat." Rose suggests. "I'm working the late shift tonight, too."

"Sounds good to me. Thank god all of my work here is done. I always give myself an extra day on these trips."

They have lunch on the coffee table, Jack and Rose sitting on the floor across from the Doctor, who perches on the dreadful floral couch.

("I like it!" he insists as Rose giggles in disbelief.)

Rose gets ready to leave, remembering suddenly what she wanted to do. As she gets ready to push Jack and the Doctor out of the door, she hands Jack a sketch she did the other day. "I didn't think I'd have time to get this to you before you left, so here."

"Hey, it's me! Did you draw this?" He holds the pencil drawing up for the Doctor to see.

"Yeah, I like to draw a bit. You're a good subject, you have a very memorable face. Although I did google you to make sure I got you right. You look very handsome in your official lawyer picture thing, by the way."

Jack laughs incredulously. "This is an amazing rendition of me. Have you taken any art classes?" Rose shakes her head no, and Jack titters. "You should do something with this. I'll keep it very close to my heart, Miss Rose Tyler. Thank you for your hospitality, and for the picture. I will see you at the banquet tomorrow, and we'll have a proper farewell." He waves his hand, turning down the hall to leave, shaking his head in wonder at the paper.

"No picture for me?"

"Of course not, Doctor. I'll still be seeing you after tomorrow, I hope. Don't worry, I'll get around to making you one too. I've got to leave in just a minute, walk me down?"

At the bottom steps to the building, the Doctor gives her a hug goodbye. He stands with his hands on her shoulders as he says, "Jack's right, you know. You should really do something with that." He grins and heads in the opposite direction.

At work, Rose spends most of her time trying to determine how exactly she's going to capture the Doctor in just a picture. She decides that she has plenty of time to figure it out and goes back to folding clothes, daydreaming about beautiful dresses and feathery wings.

* * *

The Doctor picks her up from her flat promptly at seven. Rose rushes about her room attempting to tidy up her appearance as she hears Jackie answer the door.

"Well you clean up nice, don't you, John? Rose is almost done, just wait 'ere."

Rose applies a coat of lipstick and groans as she hears her mother call the Doctor "John" again. She knows that it's her mother's way of exerting some form of control over the man. She does one final glance at her appearance and nods, satisfied with her work. She adjusts the glittery blue dress and checks her hair, making sure the braided bun is secure. _Well, here goes nothing_.

Apparently she did a halfway decent job because when she appears in the living room, the Doctor is speechless once again. Twice in two days must be some sort of record, one that Rose is proud to have set.

"You look beautiful!" he says, so sincerely it makes Rose want to cry.

"You don't look so bad yourself, Doctor. I didn't realize you owned a tuxedo. Or a bow tie."

"Probably because I avoid them. Suits are ridiculous and bow ties are stupid."

Rose laughs. "I like them." He does, in fact, look very handsome. The intense black of the jacket wonderfully offsets his eyes, making them look even more blue. "Ready to go?"

The Doctor holds out his elbow for Rose to take. "After you, Miss Tyler."

* * *

The ballroom is the picture of opulence, with large crystal chandeliers dangling from the ceiling and red velvet curtains lining areas of the gold walls. Soft string music fills the air, lending to the elegance of the atmosphere. When Rose first enters the room, she gasps as she looks at it all.

"Oh my god. This is so amazing!" The Doctor leads her over to one of the tables, the one that Jack set them up for. "It's so beautiful."

The Doctor shrugs his shoulders briefly before saying, "Yeah, it's grand. I've seen better."

"Better? Like what exactly, Doctor?"

"There are things out there that this can't even compare to. If you saw them, you'd say the same as me."

Rose clicks her tongue in disappointment. "Can't we just appreciate that this is the most elegant party I've ever been to? I've never seen anything like this."

The Doctor grins at her, all traces of dismissiveness gone from his features. "You know, I could show you some really fantastic things. Places that would make this look like nothing. There's the Vatican and the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building and the Taj Mahal. Humans are amazing, aren't they? Stick with me, Miss Tyler. You haven't seen anything yet."

Rose returns his grin, happy to see his good mood returning. "Where's Jack then?" She turns to the door and points in excitement. "Oh, there he is."

Jack waves, bringing along his obviously irritated colleague. "Rose, Doctor, this is one of our partners here in London, Donna Noble. Donna, this is Rose Tyler and one of my old friends, Doctor John Smith. Just call him the Doctor."

Donna shakes the Doctor's hand as he reaches it out and smiles slightly at Rose as she takes hers. "Nice to see someone here who isn't sixty-three. We'll stick together then, yeah? Make sure we don't get eaten alive by any of these old bags." She settles into the chair opposite Rose as Jack sits down across from the Doctor. "So you two are friends with Jack then? Has he tried to hit on you yet?"

"Tried? Succeeded, I think you mean."

"Buy me a drink first," the Doctor quips. "No, I made sure Jack didn't get his fangs into Rose here. She's a little too pretty for him anyway. He wouldn't get past the first sentence."

"I resent that statement."

"He's always like this," Donna says to Rose conspiratorially. "Trust me."

Rose spends most of the time before dinner gazing around the room, while Donna and the Doctor argue agreeably about one thing or another and Jack interjects with innuendoes or smart comments as necessary. The food they serve is rich and expensive looking, although Rose discovers quickly that she hates caviar.

She notices halfway through dessert that some of her hair is coming loose from her up-do, so she pulls the rest down, eliciting some judgmental looks from the women further down the table. Donna simply smirks and high-fives her across the table. The Doctor grins when she laughs at the gesture.

Jack invites Donna to dance after dinner, holding his arm out for her to take. Instead, she pulls an elderly gentleman out of his chair and slow dances with him while the Doctor laughs in amusement. Jack only shrugs and invites Rose instead.

From her vantage point on the floor, Rose can see the Doctor fiddling with the rest of his food as a woman who is obviously there with her husband flirts with him. She can see him shake his head "no" and smile, and the woman huffs in anger as she turns away. He turns and waves at Rose and Jack across the room, and the two wave back at him.

On their way back to the table, several things seem to happen at once. First, a drunk old man stumbles into Rose and Jack. Second, Rose breaks her heel but avoids twisting her ankle in a show of uncharacteristic dexterity. Third, the Doctor's pager goes off, blaring a harsh beeping sound from his jacket pocket.

There is a moment where everything seems to stand still, as the Doctor looks up at Rose with fear in his eyes. The pager beeps once, twice, five times, before it's in his hands.

"I need to go," he says hurriedly. "One of my patients." He pushes himself up from the table in such as graceful and feral manner that he looks like some sort of wild animal, shoving his way through the crowd as he sprints to the door.

Jack tries to pull her back to the party, whispering to her quietly, "c'mon, Rose, let's go, you don't need to see that," but she wrenches her arm from his and runs to the door, limping in her broken shoe.

As she emerges from the building, she can see the Doctor already in the process of getting into a cab. She trips her way down the steps and opens the door to settle herself next to him just as the Doctor gives the driver the address.

"Rose, what the bloody hell are you doing here?"

"Going with you."

"Oh no you're not, get out."

She smiles triumphantly at him as she points out, "We're already moving, Doctor. Besides it was getting a bit stuffy in there."

He makes some sort of angry motion with his hands, not seeming very sure what to do with his limbs. "I need to do this, Rose. It's my job."

She bristles at the comment. "Yeah, but not alone. I'm going with you, whether you like it or not. Got it?"

They sit in silence for the rest of the ride there, Rose gauging his mood as he sits. As they walk up to the building he seems to calm a bit, so Rose asks, "What happened?"

"A lot of things. What you need to know is that one of mine had- complications, and we needed to move his surgery to now as opposed to later. It's not gonna be something you can just wait out. You should go home, and I'll call when it's over. Here's money for a cab." He deposits three twenty pound notes into her hand and attempts to walk away, but Rose keeps her grip on his wrist.

"I told you, I'm not going. I'll wait."

The fluorescent lights coming from the awning above their heads makes the Doctor look likes he's only just skin and bone as he shakes his head. "Fine. Your funeral."

"Yeah, just be sure it isn't his, okay?" She attempts to smile at him, clasping his hand tightly. "Good luck, Doctor."

He nods firmly and rushes into the building, pulling off his suit jacket as he walks, looking to Rose like a warrior going back into battle (which Rose thinks that, perhaps, he is). She shakes her head and ambles after him, pulling out her phone to call her mother. She might as well have something comfortable to be in while she waits.

It's going to be a long night.

* * *

A/N: Donna! Brief, but I hope you guys enjoyed that. Dramatic Backstory is actually coming, I promise. I'm just trying to time it right in the story. So that will be soon. Also, if any of the working hours I've given for the Doctor are unrealistic, please forgive me. I don't actually know that much about the typical shifts of surgeons and Google can only say so much. If you want to see the dress I put Rose in, go to dressempire dot com and look at La Femme 16546 Dress, the blue color. Woohoo, Rose in a ball gown!

Please keep reading and review! Thank you to those who already have, especially the guest who keeps giving me really awesome feedback. You know who you are, thank you kindly. Those of you who haven't reviewed, please do! I'm not going to stop working on this story, but reviews really do motivate me.


	5. Molasses

5.

"say there's something better, but today there is a cold moon rising; and you wanted something better, but tonight you know you'll never find it." molasses by the hush sound

_A man waits in a white room, the black velvet curtains obscuring all of the light from outside. Rose sits on a chair beside him and peers at him through squinted eyes. She can't quite make out his face, but she can see his thin red lips opening as he churns out thick, black smoke. A gnarled hand comes up from the arm of the chair he sits in and brings a cigarette to his mouth. He opens his teeth steadily, gasping out more exhaust with every rise and fall of his concave chest._

_The polluted air swirls around Rose's head, sweeping through her blonde hair and invading her throat until it settles somewhere behind her ribs, in her chest. She coughs violently, her entire body shaking as she brings her hands to her mouth._

_There is blood on her fingertips, at the corner of her mouth, on the smoke-stack man's thin legs. She grabs at his arm in a desperate plea for help and notices suddenly the red puncture marks on the inside curve of his elbow._

_His eyes are large and black and Rose_ wakes with a start in one of the scratchy hospital chairs, gasping for clean air as she takes in her surroundings.

She adjusts her seated position so that the arm of her chair is no longer poking her in the back. She called Jack to say goodbye earlier, assuring him that she would watch out for the Doctor, and Jackie swung by to give her new clothes sometime before she dozed off. Her jeans and sweater are certainly more comfortable to wait in than her dress would have been.

She checks the clock on her phone and groans. Two in the morning. It's only been two and a half hours. Great. She thanks god that Jackie had the foresight to bring her one of her sketchbooks and a novel from her bedside table. She shifts around in her chair until finding the most comfortable angle to rest and flips open her drawing pad.

The lights on the ceiling blink intermittently as she sketches, surging with a slight buzzing noise as they flicker on and off. A silver moth flutters around the bulbs, finally landing after determining the best place to touch down. Its fine wings arch in little half-moons over its thin body, making the insect look like something ethereal as it stills in the glow of the artificial light.

Rose carefully traces its delicate body as the moth takes flight again with a jerk, its wings beating a staccato pattern in the air as it darts away. She flips to another page.

She surveys the boy sitting next to her, his long, dark eyelashes, the bags under his eyes, his restless sleep. A woman comes into the room and shakes him gently, whispers something into his ear. A smile slowly breaks over his face, and they hug. Rose carefully pencils it in, the joy in his eyes, the relaxation of his fingers. Another page.

She studies her own wrists as she holds the writing instrument, the smooth expanse of skin over bone, the soft material of her knit sweater just skimming her hand. She continues her picture up to her arm, carefully avoiding the mistake she made once of adding in puncture marks though there are none. Another page.

She recalls a leather jacket, dark grey, almost black, worn around the edges. The arms bend as if they hold something, but no person is underneath the heavy material. Rose lightly traces in a heart on the right side of the cloth, smudging the edges so it blurs on the page. Realizing that she drew it on the wrong side, she adds in another parallel to the first. Rough hands extending from the sleeves, holding in them a single gold chain. A pair of black eyes seem to appear from out of nowhere next to the jacket, glaring at Rose with large, cavernous pupils full of dark, angry intent. Another page, another page, _another page_-

The sketchbook flips out of her hands, landing with a smack on the linoleum tile. Rose quickly picks it up off the floor, her hands shaking slightly. When did that start happening?

Rose abandons sketching for the moment, instead lifting one of the Doctor's heavy books onto her lap. He had insisted she begin at least some of Dickens, so Rose starts on the novel as she sets her pencil to the side.

After another half hour, she gathers up her things and heads to the bathroom. Settling all of her possessions around the sink, she studies her reflection in the large mirror in front of her.

Her eye makeup is smudged around her lower lashes, so she swipes her hand underneath to get rid of the black marks. Then she adds another coat of lip balm and a quickly brushes her hair with her fingers. She rearranges her sweatshirt so that it lays flat and shimmies her jeans farther up her hips. There. Better already.

Upon exiting the bathroom, she catches a glimpse of a man stomping through the lobby, not even pausing to apologize for accidentally bumping into a few other workers there. It takes a moment for her to recognize that the man now leaving the building as actually a doctor, _her_ Doctor, and she runs after him as he walks through the doors.

When she bursts out onto the concrete steps of the hospital entrance, she notices three things. One, that it has gotten significantly colder since she was last outside, to the point where she can see her breathe leaving her body like smoke. Two, that there is also actual smoke in the air, coming from a cigarette. Three, that the Doctor, _her_ Doctor, is the one holding the cigarette, bringing the white stick to his lips like it's the last good thing on earth.

"Doctor?" Rose steps hesitantly toward him, moving as slowly as possible, as if he were a wounded animal that would scare at a sudden motion (but whether to attack or run Rose can't tell). "Are you okay? What happened in there?"

He sucks in another mouthful of chemicals and blows it harshly through his teeth. "He died," he says shortly. "But don't they always?"

Something about the way he says it, perhaps the way he speaks through a haze of smoke, perhaps the tone of his voice, cynical and apathetic to the point of tragedy, makes Rose say quietly in reply, "Not always."

He pauses at that, looking up from his hands to look her in the eyes for the first time. Rose almost jumps at the expression on his face, at his eyes, normally so full of warmth, looking so hard and cold. "Everything ends, Rose. Don't forget that. And don't tell me that shit about how maybe it's for the best or maybe you couldn't have done anything, because it's not, an' I could. Now if you'll excuse me, _Miss Tyler_," (he spits the words with such disdain, something he has never done before, not to her), "I think I'll be seeing you." He turns on his heel to walk away, still carrying the half-burnt stick in his hand, his shoulders slumped under the weight of his leather jacket (or maybe the weight of something else).

Rose runs over to him again, pulling his arm so that he is forced to stop and face her. "What the hell are you going on about?"

"Maybe about the fact that someone just died and you're still asking after me. I told you not to wait."

"And I told you you weren't going alone. Not everything is horrible because you couldn't save one man, Doctor. You're still good."

He scoffs, rolling his eyes to the sky. "Couldn't save _one man_. Couldn't save a son a father, couldn't save a mother a son, couldn't save a sister a brother, couldn't save the hospital one bloody patient, an' couldn't save a wife-" His voice breaks on the last word, and he stops there, blinking back something in his eyes until they are are as blank and angry as before. "You don't know one bloody thing about this, Rose. You don't know what it's like to have people look at you with that- that _look_, so full of hope and love, only to have to tell them you didn't- couldn't- do what they needed. And in that one moment you can feel their heartbreak, you can feel all of it... and I could feel _everything_."

Rose gazes up at his face as his eyes soften into something infinitely sadder, and she gently touches his arm. For a moment he seems to lean into the contact, until something forces its way into his throat, and he wrenches himself away. "You pity me? Don't- don't ever do that. Don't for one second think that I am something you can save in your little quest to have a better life. I am not your charity case." He pauses, seeming to try to figure out how to phrase what he's about to say.

"Do you know what they call me in there when they think I can't hear? _The Oncoming Storm_. Because once one thing goes wrong, I manage to fuck it up more until it all goes to hell." At Rose's confused expression, the Doctor shakes his head in annoyance. "Of course you don't understand, do you?"

"Then make me understand," Rose returns angrily. "_Talk_ to me, Doctor."

"Talk to you? You think you're different from everyone else out there, think you're going to be the savior of the Doctor, defender of the earth? You can't understand, not even if I tried explaining it to you. I told you to go home, and what did you do instead? I guess I've done it again, then. Picked another stupid ape." At his last remark, the Doctor immediately seems to falter, stretching his arm out to Rose as she reels back. "Wait, no, I didn't- I didn't mean it like-"

Rose stands as straight as ever as she responds, even as her eyes fill with unwanted tears. "Didn't mean it like what, exactly? What happened to 'stick with me, Miss Tyler'? What about everything you told me?" She waits for him to speak, but he doesn't, avoiding her gaze as she watches him. "I guess I should've figured that someone as clever as you'd get bored of someone like me after a while. I'm honestly surprised it took so long. Only takes most people a week." He almost seems to speak there, but stops himself before the words can come through. "I suppose I'll be seeing you, then, Doctor." She turns around to leave, but after taking a few steps away, turns back to face him again. "And Doctor?"

He looks up from where he had been looking at his hands again and says, almost hopefully, "Yeah?"

She clenches her fists at her sides, holding her arms rigid, willing her voice not to break as she speaks. "You shouldn't smoke." She turns and walks away without looking back, pulling her sweater tight around her frame in a vain attempt to keep warm, her lungs still heaving out her now-corrupted breath into the cold night air.

She gazes at the stars again in the cab and searches for the Lynx constellation, unsure of why she can't seem to spot it, unsure of why the pinpricks of light seem to be darker than usual. She forces herself to keep her eyes open while she searches, even as the whole sky seems to blur until it looks like there's nothing left.

The books she carries in her arms weigh her down, the Charles Dickens as heavy as an anchor as she climbs the steps to her building, as she enters her flat and falls into her bedroom. Only when she looks at her reflection does she notice the tracks of water making their way down her cheeks, the way her hands can't stop shaking.

She studies her reflection again, wiping away her makeup and combing her hair out of its ridiculous wavy tresses. She observes every flaw, every pore, every blackhead, her too far-apart eyes, her overbite. She tenses her jaw until it shakes her teeth, until she thinks she could break her molars. When she speaks, she makes another note in her head for her accent.

"He doesn't want you," she says harshly to the mirror-Rose, spitting the words out as if they were poison. "He doesn't want you."

She doesn't fall asleep, even as the light coming from outside sets her whole room in a blue-grey glow, the dawn slipping past the curtains like molasses.

* * *

Jackie doesn't mention anything about the Doctor or Jack as she makes Rose breakfast the next morning, doesn't ask why she isn't talking about him as she usually does. Rose eats in silence for the first time in weeks (two weeks, but Jackie doesn't mention that), gazing out the window at the pub across the street.

"I think I'm gonna meet up with Mickey and Shireen tonight. Haven't seen 'em in a while."

Jackie looks up from her coffee and stares. "Are you sure? You could always just stay in. We could see a movie," she offers hopefully.

Rose shakes her head no, turning to look back outside. The bright yellow tulips outside on the windowsill seem to have withered, stuck between fully opening and still being closed. Rose thinks that perhaps the cold snap was what did them in.

(She doesn't allow herself to wonder if it was the cold snap that did them all in.)

Jackie shifts in her chair so that she's leaning on the table, looking at Rose with concern in her bright eyes. "Are you okay, sweetheart?"

"I'm fine. 'S nothing."

Jackie nods her head slowly, obviously not buying it. Rose clears up her plate quickly, dumping its contents into the sink, and leaves the flat for work.

Work is dull (as always). Rose sorts through expensive silk dresses and bright glittery shoes, deals with customers' complaints despite not being able to fix anything, and hums quietly as she folds the clothing. She carefully avoids any songs by David Bowie and stops herself from lingering when she folds the leather jackets.

When her shift ends and she meets Mickey at the pub, she forces a laugh after he asks about "that old bloke who kept calling me the wrong name."

"He's, um. That's over, yeah. Where's Shireen?"

Rose avoids drinking too much, deciding that she should at least try to be sober for work the next day. When Mickey launches himself at her from his barstool, nearly knocking her over in the process, she gently sets him upright and wanders over to the juke box to steer clear of any further embarrassment.

She flicks quickly through the selection, deciding on the least offensive song she can. As soon as she turns to walk back over to her friends, though, a leather-clad arm halts her progress, landing on the juke box with a thud.

She sighs, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "What do you want, Jimmy?"

Jimmy smirks, looking up and down her body with an obvious leer. "Hello, love. Jus' thought we could have a chat, then." He takes a step closer to her, settling one of his hands on her waist as he whispers in her ear. "What do you say?"

Rose resists the urge to just punch him and instead steps away. "No thanks, mate. Why don't you go find Angie? Last time I checked she was always _very_ interested in what you had to say." She side steps his body and walks toward the door, clutching her purse to her chest.

Jimmy quickly catches up with her just outside of the pub and grabs her arm. "Aw c'mon, Rose, don't be like that."

"Get off of me, or I swear I'll-"

"You'll what? I don't see any big scary man here." He makes a show of checking the area around them for the Doctor. "Who's gonna save you from the big-" He steps toward her, "bad-" backs her up against the wall of the building, "wolf?" He leans in close, his mouth just inches from hers, his big, black eyes opening wider than before.

Rose lays her hands gently on his shoulders, running her fingers through his hair as he attacks her neck. She closes her eyes briefly, before tightening her hold on him and ramming her knee into his gut.

"I guess I'm gonna have to save myself then," she says breezily, throwing off his crumpled figure as he sinks to the ground, clutching his stomach.

"You bitch!" he screams, his face contorting with pain.

"Oh no, Jimmy, that hurts. Manners." She strides across the street to her building, her laced boots clacking triumphantly on the steps as she walks up.

Jackie runs up to Rose as soon as she walks in with a worried look on her face. "I heard a yell, did something happen?"

"No," Rose replies innocently. "Everything's fine." She smiles in response to Jackie's even more confused expression, walking around her mother into her bedroom. "I'm thinking of painting my room. Could we head out to get some supplies?"

Jackie nods absentmindedly from the hall, heading into the kitchen to pour herself a drink.

"Well then," Rose says aloud to herself. "Better get started."

* * *

A/N: Okay, again, I don't have a vast knowledge of hospitals and their layouts and their happenings so I legitimately took all of my knowledge of _Scrubs_ and pretended that is what all hospitals are like. Forgive me. This chapter is a bit shorter than the previous two, but that's partly because it's so focused on only two events. The chapters should be longer in the future. Also, don't worry, of course it won't end like this. Although the Doctor was being the worst here, we still have to see his Dramatic Backstory. And his apology duh doy. So keep reading to see what happens next and review! You all have been fabulous about that, thank you to those who have already :)


	6. Numb

6.

"i got dark only to shine, and i'll light up the sky. stars that burn the brightest fall so fast and pass you by; spark like empty lighters." numb by marina and the diamonds

Rose decides on blue paint, pale blue so that it goes with, but does not exactly match, her ceiling. She goes to the hardware store to gather the necessary materials for room redecorating and, with Jackie's help, performs her own personal home makeover. The whole operation takes two days, during which Rose reluctantly sleeps on the horrible floral couch.

("It's not that bad!" Jackie exclaims. Rose simply glares as she settles her pink sheets over the scratchy cushions.)

Six days after the hospital, a week after the banquet, three weeks after she first met the Doctor, Rose goes to the library once more. She settles herself on the ground in the astronomy section, piling borrowed books around her like a fortress. The light streaming through the windows is a mottled grey colour, the result of the rain splattering the glass in short, sharp bursts. She absentmindedly twists her hair over her shoulder as she reads, tapping a rhythmless pattern on her collarbone with her other hand.

Despite everything, she continues the Doctor's lessons on her own, poring over old poetry and art books in the space where he praised her for her cleverness. Rose avoids looking up to study the area, half-afraid of recalling the expression in his eyes when she spoke to him in the golden light.

She spends hours sitting there in their little alcove, reading and sketching and, at one point, accidentally napping. In the early evening, she gathers her books up once more and walks home, slower than usual due to the weight in her arms.

She does not expect what greets her when she finally arrives on her floor.

There is a stack of books surrounding her front door or, to be more precise, stacks, plural. Big and small, new and old, hard and soft, coloured and black and white, books of every kind and character that Rose could possibly imagine surround her front door, trailing off on both sides of the hallway, leaving only a small path to get through. Blank canvases of all sizes lean against the paper towers, just next to new sets of brushes and paints.

"Don't worry," a voice calls from somewhere within the miniature labyrinth, "I only bought the paints. The rest I'm re-gifting." The Doctor steps out from the stacks, holding in his hand a rather large blue book. He shrugs his shoulders. "I've got more than I know what to do with, really."

"What is this?" She asks, delicately tracing her finger along the spine of the topmost novel of the pile closest to her. "This must've taken forever to get together."

"This is partly why it took a week." He smiles wryly as he hands her the book in his hands, which Rose realizes is a collection of paintings of space. "D'you want to get these in your flat now? I've already had a couple of your neighbors scold me. Jackie nearly threw a fit when she opened the door to get to work."

Rose purses her lips and taps her foot on the ground before finally admitting defeat. "Okay, yeah. As long as I get to keep them."

It takes an hour and multiple trips to the hall, but together they manage to migrate the books and art supplies to Rose's room. ("You've redecorated!" he exclaims, but loses the excited look when she pointedly ignores him.). When the entire process is over, her bedroom is reduced to half its size and Rose has to clear out the rest so that she can actually walk around.

"That's part one," the Doctor explains at the door, where he hands Rose her coat. "There are several parts. Will you come?"

Rose nods her head suspiciously and takes the jacket, not quite sure where he's going with this. "Yeah. Sure. Part two?"

"Part two." He nods in return, holding out his elbow for her to take. Rose simply brushes past him and opens the door.

"Let's go then, Doctor." She jerks her head in the direction of the hallway and manages to walk all the way outside without turning back to see if he's following. (Like some kind of twisted Orpheus and Eurydice, but Rose isn't sure if she's leading him out of hell just yet.)

When they stand in the street, Rose in her bright yellow raincoat and the Doctor in his usual leather, the sky has darkened exponentially, the sun completely gone, the water pouring from the sky in sheets until Rose can barely see two feet in front of her.

"Doctor!" she calls, and she can hear a note of desperation in her voice as she reaches blindly around her. In his grey and blue outfit, he has managed to disappear somewhere in the storm. For a moment she almost laughs at the irony of the Oncoming Storm disappearing into an oncoming storm, but she shivers in the cold and suddenly she can only feel fear and panic bubbling in her throat again. "Doctor!"

She feels a hand grab her waist, moving up along her side, running his fingers along her ribcage until he reaches her arm and takes her hand in his. "I'm here," he says in her ear, his voice almost lost by the rush of the wind. "I'm right here, Rose." He pulls her along the sidewalk until they reach an awning and gaze in wonder at the street. From the safety of the relatively dry area, Rose can see that the storm has blackened the city in its onslaught, the only lights coming from cars and street lamps.

The Doctor tries to regain his breath beside her, having lost it in his attempt to find them shelter. He bends over to rest his hands on his knees, dropping his head down as he gasps for air. His hair and clothes are thoroughly soaked, drops of water still clinging to his eyelashes and neck. Rose's own hair is slightly damp around the front and her jeans are a lost cause, but her jacket seems to have taken most of the hit.

"What now then?" she asks him as he stands upright again. "Were you planning on walking us to wherever we're going?"

"Still am," he gasps out, gesturing to the city. "We're gonna have t'make a run for it." He rolls his shoulders once, and stretches his arms out in front of him. He reaches his right hand out for her to take as he drops down, settling his body as if he were a runner about to take off. "Ready?"

She takes his hand in her and copies his stance, bracing herself for what's to come. "Ready." Rose almost laughs as she realizes that they fit perfectly, her body leaning into his, his fingers threading through her own. To anyone passing by, even with their current stance, they would look like they were in love.

They take off into the storm, feet beating against the pavement, running like bats out of hell (and Rose wonders why it always seems to be from out of hell). He only leads them along for a few blocks before they appear to have arrived at their destination. The Doctor practically kicks in the door, shaking the water from his hair like an animal as Rose surveys their surroundings.

"I thought you might like to finish your nice evening," he explains, gesturing to the fine-looking restaurant with his free arm. "The owner owes me a favour. Don't worry, I called ahead. We'll get you cleaned right up."

No sooner has the Doctor spoken than Rose is whisked away by a waitress, who hands her a comb, hair tie, dress, and heels as she deposits her into the bathroom. Rose observes her reflection in the gold mirror, the lightbulbs lining the sides making her look like some movie starlet. She twists her hair up into a low bun and does a cursory glance of her makeup, determining it didn't suffer too big a blow in her time outside. As she puts on the short, lace dress and black heels she wonders how the Doctor knows her style better than her. She twirls experimentally, satisfied that the fabric swirls around her in a wide circle. She smiles at the mirror after a final check and exits the bathroom, where the waitress takes her wet clothes and informs her that they will be dry-cleaned and sent back to her home.

Another waiter leads her to a private table, where the Doctor waits in a black suit and tie, fiddling with the elaborately folded napkins with an amused smile on his face. When he notices her presence, he stands, buttoning his jacket as he says softly, "Fantastic." He laughs self-deprecatingly as he amends, "Well, considering the rain."

Rose smiles shyly, taking her seat across from him. "What's all this, then?"

"Well, I ruined your evening. I figured the least I could do would be to try to give you a nice dinner. I couldn't bring Jack and I don't really know Donna, so it'll jus' be us. Is that okay?" He plays nervously with his place settings as he waits for an answer, glancing up at her from beneath his long eyelashes.

"It's okay, yeah. You're gonna have to have better moves than just that, though, if you want to be friends again, Doctor."

He grins madly at that. "Oh, just you wait, Miss Tyler. You haven't seen anything yet."

Dinner is much simpler than it was at the banquet, the food more to her taste. Rose gratefully eats her pasta and salad, careful not to spill anything on her lovely new dress. She pointedly ignores the Doctor's gaze when they aren't speaking, still trying to maintain the illusion of aloofness. Nonetheless, he still manages to engage her in conversation by bringing up the universe or books or art or something ridiculous that only the Doctor could think up (his prompt of "What _would_ be the best type of alien, anyway?" sparks a thirty minute argument that neither side wins). Rose is almost angry at his ability to make her speak, but she still feels happy more than anything else.

By the time they get ready to leave, the Doctor shucking his suit jacket and Rose donning her yellow coat, the rain has died down to a sporadic kind of drizzle. This time when the Doctor holds out his hand Rose takes it, allowing him to lead her outside into the blue night (which it genuinely is, Rose notes, as the whole sky seems to have taken on an indigo tinge unlike anything she's ever seen).

"That was part two," the Doctor explains, leaning toward her slightly as they walk. "Part three is coming right up. It's a bit of a walk, though. Can your shoes take it?"

Rose laughs and grins up at him. "I'm always up for a challenge, Doctor. How far are we talking, exactly?"

He shrugs, pausing to roll up his shirtsleeves before taking her hand again, and says, "Ten minutes, maybe. I'm keeping it all in this neighborhood." He nods his head toward an ice cream parlor at the end of the street. "Did you want to get dessert? Any flavor you want. I recommend blue moon."

"You would, it's all sugar. No, I'm not hungry."

They walk in silence after that, more comfortable in the quiet than they were earlier. Rose listens to the sounds of the city, the thrum of stalled car engines, muffled music coming from pubs, the shrill meow of a cat perched precariously on a second story windowsill. The Doctor makes a face at the animal and hisses in return when it reacts. Rose looks at him incredulously until he notices her stare and feigns innocence.

He stops suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk, causing Rose to accidentally knock into his shoulder. When she looks behind her to see why he paused, Rose notices that he looks almost afraid, his eyes filled with a child-like nervousness that she's never seen on him.

"Doctor?" She tugs at his hand, wondering why he won't move.

"This is it," he says softly. "Part three." He jerks his head toward the building he's led them to, a plain granite affair with no frills or fuss of any kind.

Rose glances over the structure, unsure of what he means, until it suddenly clicks. "This your flat, then?" He nods and swallows, his throat tensing and relaxing as he does. "What's wrong?"

"It's just- it's the story, yeah. I'm going to tell you what happened." He leads her gently by the hand to his home as Rose gapes, not quite sure of what he's playing at.

When he opens the door to his flat, Rose is struck by how bare it looks. The living room is spartan, only a tan couch, white lamp, and small TV set showing any signs of life. She figures he must have kept his books in his room, because there are no indications of any shelves or the like taking up any space on the hardwood floor. The beige kitchen, connected to the front by a small walkthrough, is even more simple, with only an oven, microwave, and a tiny black fridge.

"I don't do much out here," he explains, retreating into the kitchen. "Don't normally have guests. But you probably already figured that out. Do you want tea or coffee?"

"Do you have hot cocoa?"

She hears his laugh as she settles onto the couch. "Sure, coming right up."

While he busies himself in the kitchen, Rose inspects the coffee table she didn't notice earlier. A small book rests underneath a crystal ash tray, the title of which she can't see. She lifts up the book just as the Doctor returns, handing her a mug of hot chocolate.

"Yeah, I noticed that was your favorite when I was around a bit ago. You used it up so much, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about." He holds out his hand for the book, which Rose gives back. "_Daddy-Long-Legs_. I'd never even heard of it before you. Which was odd, you know. You should get a medal or something for that."

Rose grins as the Doctor sets the book down on the table again. "So."

"So. I wanted to apologize before part three. Actually I suppose the apology is part three, and part four is the whole sad tale of Doctor John Smith."

"Okay. Let's hear it then."

The Doctor rolls his shoulders, settling onto the couch next to Rose. He swallows nervously and grabs her hand suddenly. Rose looks up only to see his bright blue eyes boring into hers. "I'm so, so sorry, Rose."

For a moment it seems like he's not going to say anything else, and Rose starts to pull away until he pulls her back with a gentle tug on her wrist.

"I well and truly fucked up back there. I said horrible, horrible things to you, things that I shouldn't have said even if they were true. Which they aren't. I was just-" he runs his fingers through his hair, which has grown a little longer, curling around his ears, "I was angry and mad and completely out of line. I'm not saying that as an excuse, 'm just saying what happened. I was angry at myself for letting him die, I was angry at you for being there to see me fail like that. I never wanted you to see me like that. But I guess that drove me a little mad, and I made it worse. And I'm sorry. I really am. Can you- can you forgive me?"

Rose pauses, not quite certain of how to respond. She glances around the room once more, to the curtainless windows where she can see the moon, a white round orb in the middle of the sky. She looks back to the Doctor, who shifts nervously, anxiously waiting for her verdict.

"Yeah," she says softly. "You're forgiven, Doctor."

He smiles once more, his bright, manic grin that Rose missed. "Fantastic."

"Don't do that again, though. Not to me."

"I promise you this, Rose Tyler. I will not do that again. Not to you."

They smile at each other for a moment before Rose clears her throat awkwardly. "So. The story?"

"Right. Let's see then. Where to start?" He mutters something to himself before deciding. "I suppose we should begin at the beginning."

* * *

_He was born in Manchester, as he told Jackie Tyler. That much was true. He left out quite a bit of information, but that much was true. His mother and father both loved poetry, which is why he knows so much about it now. He remembers his father walking around the house with his old books, reciting love poems to his mother as he wrapped his scarf around her waist, pulling her close. He was happy, then. They were all happy. Or at least that's what he thought._

_She left one day when he was eight, very suddenly. Only just said that she was sick of it all, couldn't do it anymore. He supposes now that she had always been sort of unhappy there, especially since with his father when things got difficult they got unbearable._

_His father moved to London, actually, after he finished up at Oxford. He lives just a bit away. He'll take Rose to see him one of these days. Anyway._

_That's where he met Grace. Grace Holloway. She was a Doctor, too, just like him. They met in medical school. She ended up becoming a neurologist, funny enough. She always said they complemented each others, since she was brains and he was hearts. They got married after dating a few years, moved back to Manchester and worked in the same hospital. They found out she was pregnant after a few months. He was happier than he had been in years._

_It was the middle of January when she died. About five years ago. There was ice and snow all over the city, and she never was the greatest driver. He thinks that's part of what made it so difficult. He could even blame anyone. There was no one left to blame, really._

_He was waiting for her to pick him up from something. He can't even remember what it was, looking back. Just that he thought it was so important that he had to call his wife to come get him. It bothers him, now. He'll wake up in the middle of the night and wonder what the fuck it was that made him call her. But._

_She was driving along the bridge and going too fast and it was night and it was snowing and she skidded. And if he had waited anywhere else, called her from anywhere else it wouldn't've mattered as much as it did, but it was right by the water._

_Someone else saw. So he guesses he was lucky in that respect. Because apparently he tried to jump into the water. Actually got hypothermia and everything. He doesn't really remember much of what happened. Just a lot of yelling, all of it from him, and a lot of cold. He nearly drowned._

_They recovered her body, later. She was seven months pregnant, when she died. The baby was a girl. They were meant to name her Susan or Romana if she was a girl. But he guesses they never really got the chance to decide._

_So that's it, then. The whole sad story of the Doctor. And he's not telling her this to make her feel sorry for him or to make her understand him better. He's telling her this because he likes her and she is his friend. And she deserves to know everything about him._

_Was that a good part four?_

* * *

Rose brings his hand to her face with her own, holds his knuckles to her mouth as he blinks back what looks suspiciously like tears.

"'m sorry, Doctor. For all of it."

"Thank you, Rose Tyler. I'm sorry, too. For all of it."

They sit in silence, Rose curled up against his broad chest, her spine curved like a crescent moon, his fingers threaded through her hair just so.

* * *

A/N: Okay so I actually made myself depressed there. So sad. Rose's dress is the way-in lace overlay skater dress from the junior's section at shop dot nordstrom dot com. The Doctor's mother and father are based on the information I gathered about Tegan and the fourth Doctor with some personality traits of the eighth Doctor. Also I'm not sure if there are any bridges that you can drive off of in Manchester, so we're just going to pretend. Thank you all for the reviews last chapter! I got more than I normally do, which was super nice. Keep them coming!


	7. 1234

7.

"old teenage hopes are alive at your door, left you with nothing but they want some more. oh, you're changing your heart. oh, you know who you are." 1234 by feist

The city sometimes seems to Rose to be like a half-written love letter, all good intentions and poorly-thought-out metaphors until finally the writer gives up in the middle of his sonnet and crumples the paper in frustration. The smoke and grime of the concrete buildings and metal machines are like semi-formed conceits, the drunken teenagers stumbling along the sidewalk like unnecessary semicolons. The Doctor told her once that almost everything could be divided into words, although sometimes people don't need or want to do that. Rose thinks perhaps that's what London is like.

She remembers one such romantic attempt made by Mickey back when he first had a crush on her. It was sweet, but almost tragic in a way she couldn't quite explain. She thinks maybe if he had read more examples of what to do it would have been better. She's struck with the thought that the Doctor would write a fantastic love letter, and for some reason the idea makes her blush.

She ponders this from behind the front window of Henrik's as she adjusts the mannequins' clothing. As she trades out one necklace for another on the plastic neck, she gazes idly at the street before her. The columns of the building across the way seem to be plain until Rose narrows her eyes and notices the flowery details running along the sides, miniature marble roses and ivy that run up to the topmost part of the colonnades. Unfortunately, in the same glance she can see a group of crows settling onto the top of the building, jerking their jet black wings and opening their sharp beaks to caw obnoxiously. In typical London fashion, for every good thing, there are a dozen bad.

She gently eases the leather boots off of the dummy's feet, setting them to the side to be replaced with red platform heels. Not really her style, but she shrugs it off.

"To each his own, I s'pose," she mutters to herself, buckling the shoes into place with a firm snap. She steps back to look over her handiwork, nodding to herself, satisfied with the end product.

Her attention is drawn from the mannequin back to the window again by a series of sharp knocks against the glass. She glances up to see the Doctor standing in the window, waving madly at her from the sidewalk. He points to the front door to signal that he's coming in, and he strolls over to enter the store.

"Hello, Rose!" he announces from the door, where a few of her coworkers look up to see the source of the noise, startled. He walks over to her, either not noticing or not acknowledging the stares he's receiving. Apparently no one in the history of Henrik's has ever seen a slightly manic man in a leather jacket greet one of the workers so excitedly.

"Hello to you too, Doctor," she replies, smiling up at him.

"I was jus' passing by, thought I'd see you in your natural environment."

"Oh, this place is anything but natural." She straightens up the first mannequin, moving onto the second. "My shift ends at three, 'f you want to get dinner or something."

"Sure! I was thinking we could go see the Impressionism exhibit at the Tate, and then we could get some food after."

"Sounds great. I'll see you at my flat then?"

"Absolutely." He grins at her once more before turning on his heel and bounding out of the shop. She half-laughs when he nearly runs into her manager before quickly sidestepping the short man and waving goodbye.

Rose smiles to herself, shaking her head as she goes back to fixing up the mannequin.

"Was that your new boyfriend then? He's a little old, don't you think?"

Rose looks up to see one of her coworkers in her section, pretending to refold sweaters as she looks at her with expectation written all over her face. "No, he's not my boyfriend. Why, did you want to steal him, too?"

Angie smirks, clicking her tongue. "Oh, Rose, I thought we'd got past that. And good on you for finding a guy who's not just interested in you for-" she pauses deliberately and pointedly runs her eyes over Rose's figure, "well. You know what I mean."

"Thanks for that, but I should be getting back, then," she grits out. Rose resists the urge to pull the other girl's hair or punch her in the face, and instead simply finishes up in the front and retreats to the back room as quickly as possible. She pretends not to notice the way her hands are shaking from suppressed rage.

She hides behind the supply boxes and eats her lunch in the quiet space while she reads more of _Our Mutual Friend_, which she has actually been able to get through okay, all things considered.

(_"But if you would return a favourable answer to my offer of myself in marriage, you could draw me to any good- every good- with equal force."_)

She finds herself calming down bit by bit, lets the words lull her into something close to peace. She thinks about the idea one of her English teachers from school shared, that when a person gives you a book what they are really giving you is part of themselves, a piece of their soul that they think you might like. She hopes it's true.

The walk home is slow, the airplanes in the sky screaming overhead, the murder of crows on the building across the street beating their wings against the thinning air. She settles into a rhythmic pattern of movement, like a funeral walk, or perhaps a wedding march. She decides that she'll figure out which when she gets to the end.

She thinks to herself that to anyone passing by she would look angry or upset. Honestly, she doesn't know why it's still shaking her so much, years later. She focuses on clear, blue eyes smiling at her like she's an anomaly, but in the most fantastic way, and she straightens her spine.

She matters. He cares about her. She's okay.

She walks a little faster, her combat boots clacking on the sidewalks, the petals from a woman selling roses on the street littering the ground in place of cigarettes, the red on the sidewalk looking like the best part of a half-finished love letter.

* * *

He arrives at her flat at twenty past, because the Doctor has perfected the art of knowing exactly how long it will take her to walk home. She has changed into a casual dress that she got from work, something that Jack told her looked "absolutely fantastic," in an exaggerated Northern accent, but keeps her boots, deciding perhaps she'll try something new in terms of her style: the_ I-do-things-like-spend-a-weekday-afternoon-at-a-mu seum-and-this-is-how-I-dress-for-it-and-you?_ look that she's seen the more artsy crowd wear on occasion.

He simply looks over the difference of style, looks down at his usual leather jacket/jumper combination, and shrugs, holding out his elbow for her to take. She does, smirking up at him as if challenging him to say something, and then they're off.

* * *

The Doctor is a whole lot quieter looking at art than he is when looking at historical artifacts. At the British Museum he had swung through the exhibits cheerfully, remarking on his knowledge of everything they saw to impress Rose, Jack, and any and all passers-by. Now he becomes much more introspective, sometimes softly calling to Rose to come look at a piece, pulling her by her white wrists to stand where he does so she can get the exact right angle.

"Look at that," he whispers into her hair, as if raising his voice another decibel would disturb the very air they breathe. "Do you see it?"

He never needs to clarify, of course, what "it" is. She already knows.

At every piece by Van Gogh he stands in front of it so long there is a moment every single time where Rose wonders if he's had some kind of stroke. Every single time, though, that is the exact moment where he calls to her, his voice as gentle and rough as the paint on the canvas. He doesn't say anything at all on these occasions. Rose thinks that he wouldn't have to, even if she were someone else.

At the piece "Outskirts of Paris," Rose gazes at the painting longer than he does, which she would find strange but can't bring herself to question either way. A man stands still in the middle of a road, his face indiscernible, and three birds fly over his head though they are only just silhouettes against the pale painted sky. She thinks about how she always wanted to go to Paris, though she knows the city looks much different now than from when it was 1886. She thinks it would be wonderful to see it at either time.

They buy strawberries as an afternoon snack, Rose covertly sneaking them from her purse into her mouth while looking at the paintings, though her unnaturally red lips would be a dead giveaway for anyone looking for any wrongs she might be committing. The Doctor makes a game out of the secrecy, pretending like they are spies straight out of a Bond film, having them sit down at a bench from opposite sides of the room and exchanging the fruit as if it were money or advanced weaponry. The game is over when they get caught and are forced to throw the food away, but there is a twinkle in the Doctor's eye that says he doesn't much mind the loss.

His hand in hers is warm and large, holding her still with him as they step outside into the light of the red evening sun.

* * *

"What did you think of the book, then?" she asks, gesturing to the coffee table with the hand that isn't clutching her paper carton of Chinese. She sits on the floor, holding up her kung pao chicken carefully while attempting to balance her chopsticks with one hand. Eventually she gives up and simply reaches around the Doctor's foot to get a plastic fork.

He turns from his position across from her and looks back by the couch. "What book?"

"My favorite one, _Daddy-Long-Legs_. You were reading it, right?" She skewers one particularly difficult piece and bites into it triumphantly.

He laughs. "I haven't actually started it yet. It's still there, you can see it now."

She furrows her brow and gives him an admonishing glare. "Well, it may be a bit dull for you, but I like it. You should start it when you can." She looks behind him and glances at the table. Sure enough, the little book sits there still, though this time without the ash tray weighing it down.

She stands, walking idly over to the table, sprawling over the arm of the couch as she pick it up and flips through the pages. "What happened to your ash tray?" At his confused expression, she continues. "It was on top of the book. It was a really nice one, crystal and everything."

"Oh. That. I, uh. 'm trying to quit. Figured I might as well get rid of everything. Cold turkey, cancer sticks, smoking'll kill you, an' all that."

She smiles, holding the open book in front of her face to hide it.

"Oh, come off it, Rose, I know you're dying to say 'I told you so.'"

"Well. I _did_ tell you so."

He laughs in response, pushing himself off the floor with a grunt to snatch the book away. "I'll get around to it. Promise." He places it carefully once more on the table, and pulls her by the hand to a standing position. "Come on. I have something to give you."

"Oh, no, this isn't the part where you reveal yourself to actually have been a serial murderer this whole time, is it? My mum would never let me hear the end of it. She would die too just so she could get the last word."

"If you want you can wait here where it's ever-so-slightly safer, and I'll just get it and bring it back here."

"That sounds good, yeah. Who knows what you're hiding. It could be bodies or earthworms or creepy stalker photography or worse."

"Like a coin collection?"

"Exactly."

He smirks, and retreats to the only other room in the flat, which she presumes to be his bedroom. She sits once more, pulling the book from table and skimming through it. The edition the Doctor has is really a very nice one, with large red roses blooming along the front cover that proclaims the title of the book proudly. Rose's is a simple paperback that she got once at her school's library and forgot to give back. She stills feels guilty about that sometimes, but then she forgets again, and so it remains on her dresser.

(_But maybe you loved somebody, too, and you know? If you have, I don't need to explain; if you haven't, I can't explain._)

"Rose!"

She starts, clutching the text to her chest before realizing it's just the Doctor. "Why do you insist on doing that?"

"I think the real question is why do you insist on being so easily scared?" He grins smugly at her as she huffs and sets the hardcover on the couch, standing up to face him.

"Well, then. What's the present?"

He smiles, his usual wide, excited grin, and presents her with a glossy, white pamphlet. "It's for weekly art classes. They're all at night so you wouldn't have to stop work, and they have an open studio in the mornings. You can fine-tune your style and learn how to look for jobs and lots of other things." He looks expectantly at her as she studies the information.

"How much are they?" she finally asks, looking up. "I probably can't- we can't afford them."

"They're free, see?" He pokes eagerly at the back cover. "Didn't you look at who's teaching them?"

She flips over to the front cover and finds the name. _John Smith, Artist_.

"You're teaching them? I didn't know you could draw."

"No, not me. My dad. I'm technically just one in a long line of John Smiths. Not very original, my family. After he retired, my father decided he wanted to offer art lessons for free in the city, an' when I saw what you could do I realized these would be perfect. So. Do you like it?" He smiles at her again, hopefully, looking more nervous as she considers it. "I hope you won't take it as an insult, I just thought-"

"Are you kidding? This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. I never would've thought to do something like this, and no one but you would've told me to try. Thank you, Doctor." She pushes herself onto her tiptoes and wraps her arms around him, and he pulls her close in return.

"Fantastic," he says after pulling back. "Plus, this means you'll meet my father. He's grand. And absolutely mad. But I guess that just means you're going to see where I get it from."

"Of course. I was wondering what gave you that crazy look in your eyes."

"Oh, I blame him."

For a moment they just stand there, grinning stupidly at each other, before all at once Rose realizes that she has to get home and the Doctor realizes that he needs to sleep because his shift starts in the early morning. They say their goodbyes quickly, with the Doctor promising to take her over to the first class when it starts in two weeks.

He decides on calling her a cab home, despite Rose's insistence that she could just walk, and waves goodbye from the sidewalk as the car speeds away, becoming smaller and smaller in her sight as she watches him from the window.

Outside it is warm and still, the smoke from granite buildings making the atmosphere seem like something beautiful in a way it never seemed to before, the last lights of the sun hitting the swirling air so that it looks like something out of the paintings they saw earlier in the day.

As she gets ready for bed she thinks of one of the stories her mother used to read when she was a child from her big book of fairy tales, the story of the man called Bearskin, who sold his soul just to get a good night's sleep, who was as ugly and terrible as they come but found love with a young girl with the other half of his ring.

(_"I am thy betrothed bridegroom, whom thou sawest as Bearskin, but through God's grace I have again received my human form, and have once more become clean."_)

(_He went up to her, embraced her, and gave her a kiss._)

She falls asleep thinking of the bearskin man and his bride, of _Daddy-Long-Legs_ and Lock Willow farm, of stiff, cream-coloured canvases and brand new paints, and of a man with clear, blue eyes who could see her even when she thought no one ever could. When she wakes in the morning it's to the grating sound of a particularly loud crow on her windowsill, where her tulips have finally bloomed at last.

Which, she supposes, is a better ratio of good to bad then normal. She takes it as a victory and gets up to begin her day once more.

* * *

A/N: I realized that "Animal" by Sky Ferreira was actually a cover of a Miike Snow song, so to clarify, it's not really "by" her. However, that being said, I will put "by" even if the song is a cover if I like one version over another. From now on, I will specify the original singer in my notes. The quotes at the end are from _Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales_ published by Barnes & Noble, Inc. The story is called "Bearskin." In the meantime, read and review! Thanks to those who have, you are absolutely fantastic.


	8. Delicate

8.

"it's not that we're scared, it's just that it's delicate." delicate by damien rice

She has two wings in place of her arms, long, feathery appendages that flicker and blink as she tries to perform her daily activities. She can't drink tea, or water her flowers, or fold dresses, or put on her father's beautiful gold locket. Jackie cries when she sees her, big, fat, crocodile tears, and wails.

"_What have you done? Who will have you now?_"

Yet when she spreads her arms, she can soar until the city looks like nothing.

A man with diamonds instead of eyes and flowers instead of a mouth holds out his velvet hand for her to take, but she shakes her head no.

"_I can't,_" she says tremulously, her voice rising and falling, drifting in and out of her own hearing like music. "_I can't reach you._"

He smiles and suddenly takes hold of her wing, the hollow bones underneath cracking from the light pressure, until they meld, uncertainly at first, then gaining strength, moving and touching and breathing out until her hand reaches for his in return, the soft pads of her fingertips just brushing his palm.

Rose wakes up in her bed, the cool wind coming through the window, the air fluttering against her skin like the memory of flight.

* * *

Jackie eats her breakfast from across the kitchen table, listening idly to Rose's summary of one of the Doctor's books that she's reading, a story of a man and a portrait and a deal with the devil.

"Oh, and I'm actually not gonna be home tomorrow until late, mum."

She stops eating, sets her fork down on the edge of her plate, and steeples her fingers under her chin as she asks carefully, "And why is that, sweetheart?"

Rose shrugs, shoveling another forkful of waffle into her mouth. "There's an art class he wanted me to try out. It's once a week, on Thursdays, an' I don't have to miss work. I thought it might be good."

"Just-" Jackie pauses, pushes her plate away, shifts in her chair. "I just want to know what exactly is going on with you and him."

At that Rose stops, too. "What do you mean, mum? He's my friend."

"But is that it?" Jackie asks insistently. "You're spending an awful lot of time together."

"Because that's what friends do, yeah."

"I just-" She reaches across the table to take Rose's hand. "I don't want to see you get hurt. I don't want you to see this as something more than he does. Just promise me you both know what this is, okay?"

Rose nods. "We do. I promise."

(She decides not to think about the fact that she's not entirely sure she can promise such a thing.)

Jackie smiles tightly, standing to take hers and Rose's plates to the kitchen sink. As she walks away, Rose thinks she can hear her say under her breath, "just friends, indeed."

She decides she couldn't have been saying _that_ though.

There is a blackbird perched on the windowsill in the kitchen, spreading its silken wings like something out of a dream.

* * *

The Doctor actually calls her that afternoon, which he has never done before. They exchanged phone numbers the first day with Jack, the day of the British museum and the London Eye, but he never so much as accidentally sent a blank text before, always preferring to arrive at her flat or work whenever he wanted to do something. She finds the habit both charming and unsettling, but it does suit him very well.

As a result, when she looks at the screen of her tiny, shitty mobile, she's shocked to see "The Doctor" flashing on the caller ID. She flips the phone open and answers hesitantly.

"Hello? Doctor?"

"Rose!" he exclaims excitedly into the phone. "Hullo!"

"Um," she says, drumming her fingers along the headboard of her bed, where she is lying in a pile of tangled sheets, "not to sound rude, but why are you calling?"

"No reason," he says absentmindedly into the phone, and Rose can hear something in the background that sounds suspiciously like a hospital intercom.

"Where are you exactly?" she asks, sitting up straighter in her bed so that her back rests against the headboard, her spine curled against it in a way that's not quite comfortable. She shifts until it is.

"Here, there, and everywhere," he chirps back brightly. "'m at work, if you must know. On my break. Figured I'd call to confirm that you're gettin' the night off tomorrow."

"Yeah, my shift ends at five. We're meeting your dad at seven, yeah?"

"Yeah," he replies, and she can practically see the mad grin that he's surely wearing as he says it. "Then the class is a half hour after that. I'll see you at a quarter to, then."

"Mhm," she hums, nodding her head though he can't see her, "I'll be here."

There is a moment of silence on both ends of the line, one of those brief interludes that happens sometimes when neither party knows what to say next, but neither one wants to end the conversation. For Rose and the Doctor at moments like these, Rose feels like the entire universe has halted, like the air in the room has gone still, as she waits for. For anything, she supposes. What that may be she doesn't know.

"I-" he begins on the other end, his voice faltering briefly before continuing, "I just wanted to hear your voice."

(She absolutely refuses the think about the fact that instead of saying _I just wanted to talk to __a friend_ or _I just wanted to have __a nice chat_ or any other variant of platonism, he said he wanted to hear _her_ voice, like it is something special, like she is the only one he would even think to call.)

(She doesn't really know what to say now.)

"I'm starting on your books," she says in replace of a comment on his confession. "Did I ever tell you about how my mum used to read me these fairy tales before we lost the anthology," (she's particularly proud of her use of that word), "in the move?"

"No, when did you move?"

"When I was five or six. Anyway. You gave me the exact same one when you gave your collection to me. I've been reading some of them. The Brothers Grimm. Wow."

He laughs. "Yeah, those old bastards were pretty terrifying, weren't they?"

"You telling me," she says, chuckling in return. "I don't get why my mum used to read them to me. They're pretty messed up, even for a twenty-year-old."

She can hear him clearing his throat at that, almost uncomfortably. "Yeah. Pretty fucked up."

She pauses, sighs as she stands up from the bed and begins pacing what's left of her room. "I had a weird dream actually, about one of them. I think it's from when I was reading that one about the six brothers and their sister. You know, 'The Six Swans?' That was mum's favorite."

(_-but as the one shirt wanted the left sleeve, so the youngest brother had a swan's wing instead of a left arm._)

"I always thought it would look so pretty to have wings instead of arms," she says idly. "And then yesterday I dreamt that I did." She leaves out the fact that he was in her dream, too, with jewels in his eyes and roses in his mouth, turning her back into a perfect human with a touch of his hand.

"Maybe you have the subject of your next piece, then," he says softly. Rose brings the phone closer to her ear, trying to catch every word. "That sounds beautiful."

They say their goodbyes quickly, Rose not really wanting to go, but also acutely aware that something is changing, something that she doesn't want to look at too closely just yet.

She exhales slowly as she drops the phone back onto her duvet, raising her eyes to the window, where the light streaming through is a warm, golden glow.

* * *

"You ready?" he asks excitedly, bouncing on the balls of his feet as she opens the door.

"Almost," she replies, laughing a bit at his eagerness, "'m just putting on my shoes. Wait right here."

He steps further into the room, swinging the door shut with his foot as she stumbles around him to the coat closet, locating her boots and pulling them on clumsily.

"New?"

She blinks, pausing in her movement to shut the door. "What?"

"New shoes," he clarifies, pointing at the rough, black Doc Marten's she's wearing. "Did you get rid of the trainers?"

"Yeah," She glances down at her shoes. "Not bad for thrift, eh? Mickey likes this one place, and he's much better at getting a bargain than me."

"Ricky does seem like the type to barter-"

"Mickey."

"Ricky."

"Mickey."

"No," he finally decides, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "I refuse."

She laughs at his stern expression. "Refuse to what? Acknowledge his proper name?"

"It isn't a proper name!" he cries adamantly, just barely refraining from stomping his foot on the ground. "It's a bloody awful name. 'm doing him a favor!"

She scoffs. "Whatever you say then, Doctor. Jus' don't let Ricky hear you say that."

"Mickey."

"Oh, just- bugger off, would you?" She smiles though, leaning back slightly as she takes in his grin. "Did I need to take any supplies with?"

He nods, and she quickly goes back to her room to get a canvas and a set of new paints, tucking them under her arms as she stands in front of the Doctor once more. "Alright. I'm ready to go."

"After you, Miss Tyler." He mock bows as she exits, pulling the door shut with a click as he takes her hand in his, threading their fingers together in a gesture so familiar Rose can't remember how she ever got along without it.

* * *

The room is large and open, with rows and rows of easels facing a kind of circular stage on a descending angle. The Doctor abruptly releases her hand as he approaches the man sitting on a stool, his face hidden by a large canvas as he paints. Rose opens and closes her fingers as she tries to get used to the absence of heat.

"Dad," he calls to the artist, waving at Rose to get closer as he walks down to the man. She follows him nervously, slightly unsure of what she should do. Despite the Doctor having met her mother already, she's entirely certain that meeting his father is a different affair altogether.

The man stands suddenly, almost tipping over his seat as he jumps from behind the canvas. From somewhere in the back, a short, stout dog that Rose didn't notice at first glance follows him excitedly. "Johnny!" he exclaims as he sees his son.

Rose immediately sees the resemblance and understands suddenly what the Doctor meant when he said he blamed his crazy on his father. Despite the white hair and long, multi-coloured scarf that his son wouldn't be caught dead in, John Smith has the same wide, bright eyes, the same manic smile. Rose giggles at the similarities as she notices them, and the dog barks.

"Shut up, K-9!" Smith calls, changing his tone of voice to a harsh, angry one, and the dog snuffles sadly, settling its head on the ground. "Sorry. Corgis are very easily excitable. K-9 here is a particularly bad when it comes to meeting new people. Would you like a jelly baby?" He picks up the bag of sweets from the ground, offering them to Rose as he softens his smile. She shakes her head no, and he turns back to the Doctor. "So, Johnny. This is the famous Rose Tyler, then?"

"The very same," he replies, rolling his eyes when Rose mouths "Johnny?" to him. "Rose Tyler, this is my dad, John Smith. He'll be teaching your lessons in, oh, about a half-hour."

"Indeed," Smith responds gravely, nodding his head firmly as he walks over to them, K-9 following closely behind. "I'll be teaching you the art of art. We've a lot to do, much to talk about, many, many things to paint. Are you ready, Miss Tyler?"

"Yes," she responds just as seriously, trying not to smile as K-9 toddles over to begin sniffing at her calf. She looks down. "Hello there, K-9." She glances up once more to look at Smith. "Why is he called that anyway?"

"Oh, that's just a nickname. His full name is _Gustav Klimt the Symbolist Painter, Mark 9_, since my original _Gustav Klimt the Symbolist Painter_ died when I was just a little one with a much smaller scarf. I kept naming my dogs after him in his honour, but _Gustav Klimt the Symbolist Painter, Marks 5, 6, 7, or 8_, got rather difficult to say. So it's just K-9. I find it appropriate, all things considered." He ruffles the dog's ears affectionately. "We're very happy with the decision to shorten."

"Alright, then," the Doctor finally interjects, swinging his arms back and forth, and to Rose he looks slightly uncomfortable. He holds himself carefully away from her, separate. It bothers her, for some reason. "All the introductions have been made, Rose is ready for her lessons, so I think I'll be heading out-"

"No!" Smith shouts abruptly, causing Rose to almost jump it shock. "I haven't seen you in the flesh for far too long! You will stay, and you will enjoy yourself, Johnny!"

"Fine," the Doctor snaps. "And would you quit calling me Johnny?"

"Never. Never, ever, ever. Ever ever ever ever."

The Doctor smirks, and Rose is happy to see that he looks more amused. "Are you quite finished?"

"No." He pauses, inhales and exhales. "Ever."

"Okay, well-"

"Ever."

"Dad-"

"I'm done now."

Rose bursts into laughter, and both men turn to look at her with the exact same expression of befuddlement, which just makes her laugh harder. "You two are quite a pair," she manages through giggles, holding her stomach, "like father, like son, I suppose."

They turn to face each other, the look of confusion still marring their features. "No," both say at once, "I don't see it."

* * *

The class is much more difficult than she expected, Smith moving through the basics as quickly as he moved through his conversation with his son. She glances worriedly around her once they begin the studio time, concerned that the other students are much more advanced, even more so when he comes over to look at her work and heaves out a sigh, shaking his head.

She brightens when he leans in closer so that only she will hear and says, "You're much better than he said. I'll have to give him a talking to about giving proper credit." He does a little spin as he turns away to the rest of the class, and when Rose catches the Doctor's eyes, he smiles proudly.

She finishes up the lesson rather triumphantly, gathering up her paints as she leaves the canvas on the wooden easel, since Smith announced that they would be there to work on at any time over the course of the week if anyone wants to ask about available studio time. She lingers in the room as the rest of the class leaves, realizing that she doesn't know where the Doctor and his father ran off to. She licks her forefinger, attempting to rub out a splash of blue paint that made it's way onto her shoes, when she hears a loud conversation coming from somewhere in the hallway. She stops to listen when she recognizes the Doctor's voice.

"Dad, you know I love you, but just stay out of it, okay?"

"Don't pretend like you don't know exactly what I'm talking about."

"Oh, I know what you're talking about, I just don't think you should be."

"You know as well as I do what's happening here, what's happened already. You're going to regret it if you don't take this chance. You and her both."

"She's better off without anything like that," the Doctor says tersely, and suddenly the conversation becomes much more serious, the tone of it changed to something that makes Rose feel slightly ill. "So drop. It." She hears footsteps coming back towards the door, but they stop suddenly.

"Do you know what it was like?" Smith says harshly. "Do you remember how you were after Grace? I could barely look at you, let alone speak to you. You carried her everywhere, like a disease, like a bloody chain around your neck. You were dying, you were choking, you were in the fucking river every minute of the day, and I couldn't do anything to stop it. And you've been in this awful in-between state since then. Even just a few months ago I could still see it in your eyes whenever you looked up. But when she came along." He pauses, and Rose steps forward a little more, trying to hear. "I could tell something had happened the first time you called me after her. You sounded happier. You sounded better."

"Dad-"

"She's making you better. And you're doing the same for her. I can see it on your faces, and I can hear it in every single word. So don't tell me that I don't know anything. I know that much. And you need to do something about it. I always told you that even out of something as terrible and evil as death there will be good. This is your chance. Take it."

There is a pause, and Rose holds her breath. "It's not mine to take," the Doctor finally says quietly, and the footsteps start up again. Rose rushes back to her chair, taking a seat at the stool and pretending to rummage through her bag as the Doctor enters the room once again.

He apparently doesn't know she could hear anything, because when he jerks his head toward the direction of the hall, nothing shows on his face but weariness. Rose says her goodbyes to the older John Smith, scheduling studio time for Sunday, and follows the Doctor as he walks down the hall.

They walk out of the building together yet somehow still apart, Rose unable to stop thinking about what they said, not quite sure of what it was they were saying, and the Doctor somewhere in a world of his own. At the first red light, the orange lit hand halting their progress, the Doctor gently reaches out and takes her hand in his, lacing their fingers through each other's once more.

* * *

She walks into the room, noting that in the light of day there are several large windows along the back wall, allowing the light to surround the space, casting her canvas in shadows. Rose picks up her easel and rotates it, so the sun hits it just so as she sits down to continue her pencil sketch.

"Hello, Mr. Smith," she calls to the front, where he and his dog lay across from each other on the floor, each resting his chin on the ground and glancing over at her.

"Please," he says with a grunt as he stands, "call me John. Or if that's too weird, just call me Smith. I'd much prefer that over any Mister."

"Okay, Smith it is then," she laughs, leaning back to look at her work so far. She lightly traces in another detail on the wing, drawing a thin black line of feathers down to her ankles as she prepares to take flight. She continues like this for a few minutes, until without warning he continues a conversation she didn't realize they were having.

"Johnny's like that sometimes."

She stops, resting her pencil on the ledge. "'m sorry, what?"

"Well, I suppose you call him the Doctor, but I can't actually call my son that without feeling horribly inadequate, so I call him Johnny to bother him. Works pretty well. But he's like that sometimes. Very stubborn." He points to her as he leans against his stool, paying no mind to her confused expression. "You, though. You're a bit like that, too. Not even going to admit that you heard everything we said about you yesterday." She gapes, and he continues, chuckling a bit. "Don't ask how I know. We'll call it being psychic and move on. But anyway. I know you were listening."

"I'm so, so sorry for intruding, but I couldn't-"

"-help but overhear, I know. It's fine. Be glad _he_ doesn't know. Because if he knew that you know that I know how he feels about you, he'd be out of your life faster than anything. I'm guessing you don't want that to happen." She nods, glancing down at her shoes. "I just have one piece of advice for you."

"What's that?" she asks, unable to stop her curiosity, looking up at him as he stares at her.

"Don't let him push you away. I'm sure he's already tried once already. Maybe even succeeded and came around later. But if he finds out that you know that he's in love with you, well. He'll be gone in a heartbeat. And what I said about that, when I said that you two are good for each other, that wasn't just for him. It was for you. So don't let him push you away, not even if all of this ends up going to bits in the worst possible way." Smith focuses his blue eyes on her, his gaze so intense Rose would move away if she wasn't frozen in her seat. "Promise me you won't let him go."

She nods, swallowing the lump in her throat that formed all of a sudden. "I promise," she whispers, picking up her pencil once more with shaking hands. She finishes her beginning sketch, leaving the canvas in the studio, and goes home in the late hours of the evening, trying her hardest not to think as she enters her room filled with all of his books, all of his pieces of himself that he gave to her freely.

When she goes to sleep that night, there are paint splotches all over her skin, a callous beginning to form on the palm of her hand, and she thinks perhaps he's beginning to leave his mark on her body in the same way as he did with the rest of her.

* * *

A/N: Okay, I'm actually super proud of this chapter. Big things happened. Again, the line quoted is from the Barnes & Noble edition of _Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales_. It's on page 426. I haven't seen the Fourth Doctor, so forgive any problems with my characterization. Read and review and stuff! Thank you very much to those who have and who are and who will.


	9. Unguided

9.

"there is something unguided in the sky tonight." unguided by the new pornographers

The cadence of his voice is something that she can't forget.

When she speaks, she hears him in her words, his harsh accent emitting from her mouth of its own volition. When she feeds her plants, she hears him in the sound of the water hitting the petals, the tulips now fully blossomed. When she breaks a glass in the kitchen sink, she hears him in the sound of the shatter, in the sickly slide of scratching metal. When the storm rolls in through the city, there and gone as quickly as a bullet, she can hear him in the roar of thunder shaking at her windows as the sirens crawl past her building.

She thinks maybe it doesn't mean anything.

(She knows in her gut she is wrong.)

The red hot sun burns on in the sky.

* * *

She stands with her feet shoulder-width apart, her arms hanging lightly against her side, the ends of her ponytail just brushing the bottom of her neck. She closes her eyes, allowing her long lashes to brush the skin underneath. If she listens hard enough, she can hear the children screaming in the playground across the street, a car alarm that no one is turning off, the singing of the insects in the warm, June air. If she doesn't try to hear, the silence in the storage room is oppressive and heavy, pushing at her from all sides.

"Rose!" Angie calls from the front room. "We need you!"

She sighs gently, the breath fluttering warmly away from her mouth. "Coming!" she shouts back, not turning around. The room is dark, large cardboard boxes filling the space in piles, and it's colder in there, wonderfully chill compared to the heat of the day. She grabs her finished lunch from the ground, depositing it into a trashcan as she heads back into the shop, into the fray once more.

Rose sets about with the blouses, the fine silk material falling over the sides of the shelves, looking like something out of a Salvador Dalí. Sometimes, when she's working, she likes to pretend that she's actually a customer, able to afford beautiful things like the clothing at Henrik's. But then she has to open up a dressing room full of clothes for a teenage girl who will only buy one thing anyway, and the illusion is destroyed.

"Whatever happened to that old bloke who was hanging about then?" Rose looks up from her work to see Angie smirking from across the dresser, folding trousers with pale hands topped with silvery, acrylic nails. "I mean," she continues innocently, "I haven't seen him in a while. He get tired of you?"

"Whatever happened to Jimmy?" Rose shoots back, feeling her blood boiling already. She knows that she shouldn't let Jimmy or Angie or anyone, really, rile her up, Mickey always warned her against it, it's been the same since she was seventeen. "He get tired of you?"

Her face twists in outrage and anger, a cold kind of cruelty replacing the mocking in her slate eyes. "Only after he dumped you," she replies, hissing the words through her crooked teeth. "Jimmy's a prick, but never say he doesn't know when someone's beneath him."

Rose can feel the colour draining from her face, the tears threatening to fall from her eyes, the bile rising in her throat. Angie almost looks regretful, but years of living like she does have hardened her to a fine point, defensive, sharp, and unforgiving as a snake.

She shakily finishes her section, glances around the store to make sure the floor is in good shape, and retreats, claiming a smoke break as she heads to the back exit. If anyone remembers that she's never taken a smoke break in her entire time working there, they don't mention it.

She practically falls outside, leaning onto the railing of the stair as she gasps in the outside air.

(The bedsprings creaked from behind the door, in her room, on her bed, and Jimmy and Angie were on it, and instead of even trying to hide it they _smiled_ at her and continued.

But even after that, when Angie started working at Henrik's after Rose finally went home to Jackie, she'd sometimes come in with bruises on her thin wrists, black circles underneath her grey, grey eyes. And everyone knows Angie because Angie belongs to everyone, and so Rose can't even be angry, because even then she would have rather been someone's than anyone's, and she knows that she has a better chance of that happening than Angie does.

And it's difficult to hate someone when you understand them.)

She straightens her spine, blowing even breaths from between her teeth, and she feels better. Even so, she digs around in her jeans' pockets for her mobile, clinging to it as if it were a life preserver as she presses in a call.

The phone rings once, twice, seven times before anyone answers, and it's with a shuffling, a muffled cough, and the sounds of something falling down before the Doctor croaks back, "Hello?"

(_her words, the water, the flowers, the thunder, the broken bits of glass in the kitchen sink_)

"Hey," she manages as casually as she can, "just thought I'd call."

More fumbling, switching his phone from one ear to the other, another distant cough. "What about?" he asks, trying to work some excitement into his tone.

Her brow furrows as she hears him. "Are you sick?"

"No," he responds unconvincingly, "'m fine. Just taking the day off."

"You're sick."

"Maybe."

She sighs, rubs her hand along her forehead, pinches the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger (like the way Jackie did when she came home, mascara staining her pale skin, carrying half of what she took with her and less of what she had to begin with, which was nothing in the first place). "What's wrong?"

"'s just the flu. I'll be fine. Why did you call?"

She smiles then. "You're always fine. My shift ends at five. I'll be there in two hours, yeah?"

"You don't have to do-"

"Say yeah."

A melodramatic sigh on his end of the line, and the sound of him flopping back onto his bed. "Yeah."

She ends the call with a movement of her finger, snapping the phone closed. She fills her lungs with as much air as possible before blowing it out through her lips, her stomach caving in as she exhales.

From the stairs behind the shop anyone could listen, hear the music of the insects littering the pavement like confetti, the sounds of cars careening through the streets.

* * *

The sun beats down on her as she walks to his building from the shop, and Rose is grateful once more for the bleach she puts in her hair. When she was little, and her hair was a darker shade, in the summer she'd put her hands to her head and burn her fingers from the heat. She began dying her hair when she was fourteen, back when the men on the street first began cat-calling at her, leering at her and Shireen as they walked home from school. First black, then red, then finally blonde. Jackie says she'll ruin her hair, but she doesn't much mind. It's only dead skin, either way.

Even still, the pavement burns her feet through her thin sandals, and she quickly ducks into the shade of the awning as she approaches the door. She presses her finger to the buzzer, impatiently waiting for him to respond.

The intercom crackles to life, and the Doctor's voice comes through from the little box with a staticky edge. "Rose," he says indignantly, "I'm fine."

"How do you know it's me?"

"Because you just told me," he replies smugly.

"Oh, just let me in, Doctor." She smiles when the buzzer sounds, opening the door with her foot as she carries her supplies with her. Despite being stubborn, he gives in to her very easily.

(She stops herself from continuing that train of thought.)

She bounces on the balls of her feet as she waits for him to come to the door, glancing around the hallway. The door swings open abruptly, and she focuses her attention on the open frame at the sound.

"Don't laugh," he sniffles, clutching the duvet closer to his body.

"You look terrible," she says carefully. He does. He has bags under his red eyes, he hasn't shaved in a few days, judging by the stubble growing on his chin, and his hair (since it's been growing out a bit) is flattened on one side, like he slept on it funny. He's wearing his pajamas, a simple flannel affair, the first time Rose has seen him wearing something other than his leather jacket.

He looks hilarious.

She laughs.

"I told you not to laugh!"

"I couldn't help it!"

"Oh," he scowls, "just come in, and give me my chicken noodle soup."

She sidesteps the massive blanket covering him and kicks off her shoes as she looks up, asks him, "How did you know I had chicken noodle?"

He closes the door with his elbow, turning to her. "Because that's what you get sick people." He gestures vaguely to the living room. "Make yourself at home."

She chuckles, walks to the kitchen to set down his food, and settles herself on the couch as the Doctor lumbers back to his bedroom like a grizzly bear just awoken from hibernation.

Rose feels like something is off in the apartment as she sits there, waiting, and she wonders what it is. New furniture? Different wall hangings? A new carpet? As he emerges from his room, she realizes that it's all of those things. Since she was last there, he has put up some prints of Van Gogh and Monet, replaced the ratty, off-white couch with a smooth, soft, grey one, and put his coffee table on top of a small, decorative rug.

"You've redecorated," she announces as he sits down next to her with his soup, and he glances at her from the corner of his eye.

"Yeah," he confirms, looking around the room himself. "Not one for home decor, me, but I was inspired by your bedroom transformation. My dad helped me out a bit."

"Figures," she murmurs, taking one final glance before standing and moving to the kitchen. "Well then, Doctor. Shall we see about making you good as new?"

"What?"

"Tip-top shape?"

"Stop."

"Fit as a fiddle and ready to go?"

"Why are you doing that? It's weird."

They eat together, Rose attempting to devour her half of the soup before he can steal it, and she swats his hand away as he tries to grab the bowl. ("I'm still hungryl!" he complains. She only chuckles and replies smugly, "I thought you said you didn't want it.")

"Did you ever read the book?" she asks once more, because for some reason it seems desperately important that he read it.

"Oh, I have it in my room," he says, pointing to his bedroom. "I was going to read it today, but then I was sick. Go figure."

He puts on the telly in the later hours of the evening, the bright light setting the room in a fluorescent glow as they sit together, his arm draped across the back of the couch. If she leans to rest against the cushions, his hand just touches her thin shoulder, the contact making something hollow in her chest, just between her lungs.

She wonders if it's her heart, beating there still.

* * *

The light coming through the window in the living room is an abnormally green-tinged shade of yellow, just like the colour of the stems of a set of stubborn tulips fully grown on a windowsill in London. It rained the whole night through, the water splattering against the glass as the thunder roamed through the city, and Rose and the Doctor are on the couch in the living room, and Rose is dreaming.

She stands in a labyrinth of some sort, like in the story of the Minotaur, the one that the Doctor told her about once at a museum, but instead of walls there are mountains of books, piles of encyclopedias and novels and memoirs and pictures stories stacking up to the sky until Rose can't even see where it ends.

"_Doctor!_" she calls, her voice wavering like water. "_Where are you?_"

No response.

She tries once again, trying to make her voice heard above the rushing of the wind, the loud gusts that echo through the maze, despite the fact that there is no air flickering through her hair, against her skin. There is no sun, no moon, no stars, no way to see, no idea of how to get out.

Until a lightbulb flickers to life just above her head.

She cheers, running along the track as more light and dim in front of her, leading her to the exit, or the entrance, or to something entirely different.

A man with pale blue eyes and a leather jacket and large, rough hands stands at the end of the track, his head turned to the side as she approaches.

"_You're here,_" she says softly, reaching out her hands for him, the tips of her fingers just brushing his clothes, and then-

He steps back, just out of her reach.

She tries once more, but he keeps retreating, never looking at her, never allowing his icy eyes to see her, and she attempts to catch him but to no avail.

He begins to run, his heavy boots clomping on the ground like something monstrous, and she tries to stop herself from crying.

"_Wait,_" she calls to his back, his shoulders hunched forward like he is an animal in pain. "_Don't go! I love-_"

She wakes up with a start, pushing up from her stomach with her knuckles until she falls over the side of the sofa. She glances up to see where she is, only to see the Doctor just behind her, still fast asleep, his hands reaching out as if for her. There is an empty space on the couch that is just her size, an empty space in his arms that where she would fit perfectly, and Rose can't even think about what that means.

She leaves, grabbing her shoes and heading out the door, away from the still-sleeping Doctor, his fingers beginning to curl from the absence of heat.

The air outside is suffocating, the water from the storm still crackling through the city like a flood.

She enters her flat as quietly as possible, shutting the door behind her carefully, twisting the knob so that it makes no noise. The last time she stayed away the whole night without calling was back when she was still going with Jimmy. She flinches at the sound of a lamp clicking on from the kitchen, her hands moving to cover her ears on an old reflex.

"Well then," Jackie intones as Rose walks up to her, "where've you been?"

"I was with the Doctor, an' I guess we just lost track of the time-"

She holds up a hand to cut Rose off. "Rose, I know you told me you two are okay, but things like this make me worried. Sweetheart, don't you see it? Don't you understand what's happening?"

Rose nods, blinking back something in her eyes, swallowing the lump in her throat. "I have to go. I have work in twenty."

"Just." Jackie pauses, looks at her daughter straight on. "Be careful."

Rose gazes back at her large, worried eyes, as bright and blue and cautious as the sea.

"I will," she lies through her marble-white teeth.

* * *

The night sky is dark, the stars all crystal clear, and from her position right by the windows she can see everything, name every single one. She lathers paint onto the canvas, dark blue and black and purple and little pinpricks of white in the background, her wrists moving by themselves, automatically.

It's almost done, the painting of her and her wings. Weeks of the summer sun, weeks of stargazing, weeks of studying feathers and feet until her eyes watered with overexertion, and she is almost done with her first real painting. Smith told her after the last class that he was going to try to help her get some of her work into an art gallery, or maybe even figure out a way to get other freelance work.

"And if any of you are interested," he calls from the front of the room, "I have a few pamphlets for an art symposium that will be in Edinburgh in September. I'll leave them here, and whoever wants to take them can." He sets the papers on the desk with a flourish as Rose and the other students begin packing up their things to leave.

He calls for her to stay back as she passes by his easel, waving her over enthusiastically as K-9 pants breathlessly next to him. "Rose! Weren't you going to take a pamphlet?" He looks at her expectantly, excitement tensing all of his muscles so that he looks like a coiled spring, ready to snap at the slightest provocation.

She shakes her head, her hair falling out of its perfect ponytail around her face in golden wisps. "Can't. Too much money. And I don't have anyone to travel with anyway. My mum and I can't both take three days off of work. But thank you."

Smith scoffs, rolling his eyes in disbelief. Below him, K-9 does a similar gesture, stretching his tiny body before settling on the ground and looking up at his master with doe eyes. "In here is all the information you need on how to get discount train tickets. And Johnny will go with you. I'll talk to him."

She shifts on her feet uncomfortably, clicking her tongue a little as he nods happily, totally satisfied with his thinking. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" she asks, looking up at him from under dark, thick lashes.

He smiles, wide and manic. "Oh, Miss Tyler, I'm always sure."

And that is it. Arrangements are made, the train is booked, the Doctor is excited, and Rose feels an overwhelming sense of dread as she marks off days on the calendar until the weekend is there, a smudge of red ink on a sheet of paper signaling the end of something desperately important.

She thinks maybe it doesn't mean anything.

(She knows in her gut she is wrong.)

* * *

A/N:What would you guys think of getting just a few more chapters? My school is starting up in like 3 weeks so I'll have less time to update. I was thinking of capping it off at 13 or 14 chapters and an epilogue, but I wanted to see if you guys thought that that was moving things too fast. Let me know. Also I don't think there is actually an art conference in Edinburgh, but we're pretending. I know they exist, but I can't find out where. Thank you so so so much to everyone who reviewed last chapter! I got such lovely responses, I was reading them with a big dumb smile on my face. So keep reading and reviewing and all those lovely things.


	10. Magic (Part One)

10.

"and you made up the list of your luckiest stars," magic vs. midas by sunset rubdown

(_part one_)

She learns late in August, when the sun is high and in flames in the atmosphere and the insects are beginning to creep slowly away from the city, that he used to work with his hands a lot as a teenager, callouses forming on his palms, over his fingertips, between his aching joints. He tells her they never quite went away, that he wouldn't want them to even if they could.

"They're a part of me," he explains softly, holding her hand up with his to the yellow light, and she can physically _see_ the love in his eyes, in the way he looks at her, like she is the sun or the moon or the stars or something like all of them. She looks down, hides herself behind a fan of eyelashes and curled, blonde hair. His hands are as rough as sandpaper, as strong and heavy as an ox, holding her with him like gravity.

She knows for sure in that moment something that has been on the periphery of her vision since the first word he spoke; that she loves him, loves him, loves him, _loves him_. Instead of feeling reckless and impossibly young the way she did with Jimmy she feels older, important, adoring and adored. She can feel the weight of him settling into her, somewhere underneath her skin, pressing soft against her bones.

Still, she can already see the way it will all happen on the red horizon by the time the summer slides into fall, the leaves dropping from the trees in dried husks, corpses of flies lining the streets.

They take the train to Edinburgh, almost five hours of flickering images against the window of the car, the Doctor sitting across from her and Rose stretched out along the seat, her hands above her head, a strip of pale skin visible between her jeans and her cotton t-shirt. She pretends not to notice the way his eyes fixate on the image, turns her own to the grey sky just outside.

They speak in fragments of conversations, painting words between them like links of a chain, and eat strawberries in the afternoon like the day at the museum when her mouth was red and white and his was making the smallest motions to call her to him.

The British countryside is beautiful and green, rolling fields and blue skies as far as she can see, everything turbulent and gasping with life, and the train rolling along the metal tracks like ticker-tape. There are birds just below the clouds, little v-shaped silhouettes against the watery sun, and Rose hopes they make it to where it's warm, like when she was young and imagined a tropical island of all the birds that "flew south for the winter," flamingoes and penguins and hawks and silky, dark blackbirds all gathered onto a palm tree in the pink sunrise.

She describes the image for the Doctor as best she can when he quips, "penny for your thoughts," and he looks at her mouth and her collarbone and her light brown eyes as she speaks. She can feel the memory of feathers against her forearms as he leans over for a bite of her food, accidentally brushes his leather sleeve against her smooth skin.

"Sounds fantastic," he says softly when she finishes, and he lays down on his seat opposite hers, parting his teeth to scrape against a fine, velvet fruit.

The train chugs to a rumbling halt in the late hours of the afternoon, when the air is warm and still, the sun beginning to sink lower in the sky, and the Doctor nudges her shoulder with his own as they step onto the platform.

"On foreign soil at last, eh, Rose?" he says excitedly, grabbing at his suitcase with his right hand, reaching for her with his left.

She hums a confirmation, taking in the hustle and bustle of the station. Somewhere new, the first country she's been to outside of England her whole life, even if it's only just a neighbor. It figures that it is the Doctor who actually manages to take her there.

She tilts her head back, smiles up at him, threads their fingers together. "Let's go then, shall we?"

The city itself is all narrowed and sloping cobblestone streets, grey-brick buildings pressing in on all sides as they walk through, dodging cars as they drive up close to the sidewalk. Rose can catch fragments of conversations as they pass by, bits and pieces of the American tourists and the locals, both of whom she has to strain to understand. The Americans all speak rapidly, loud, excited gestures and pointing to landmarks, _look there, the castle, it's beautiful,_ and she remembers pictures of New York and Chicago and Los Angeles that she's seen and thinks that this is all as new to them as it is to her. Big wonderful buildings that she's never seen before, and the Scots all walking around with their heads tilted toward the pavement, not even seeing how _grand_ it all is, how gorgeously _fantastic_.

She breathes in the unknown air with gasping lungs and laughs.

"What's so funny?" he asks, glancing down at her from where he was watching the shadows of the birds against the pale sky, swooping over the green-grey hill overlooking the city.

She smiles, wide and bright, holds their hands up between them in victory, and he _understands_, all of it, and smiles in return. "Everything."

* * *

They stop by the hotel rooms to put all of their things into their adjoining rooms, the Doctor insisting that he'd rather take a long nap than go downstairs and mingle.

"Just go on without me," he mumbles, his voice muffled by the pillow. "Go on. Have fun. Socialize. Meet other artists an' all that jazz."

She huffs, throwing half of his comforter over his prone body before turning back into her own room and to get ready for the evening's activities. She turns her phone on silent, realizing that she'll be seeing a presentation anyway.

She fluffs her hair a bit at the ends, refreshes her eye makeup and lip balm, most of it having been taken off by the long hours on the train. What to wear is a bit more pressing question. On the way up from the lobby, she saw a few people in nice clothes, but still a few people in casual outfits, long scarves, big glasses, cigarette smoke. She eventually decides on a skirt and a top, figuring she can always decide whatever way she'd like to present herself once she gets downstairs.

She stuffs a small notebook and a pencil into her purse on the way out and takes the lift down, shifting nervously on her feet as it dings at each floor. On the third floor, a gaggle of young women get on, talking excitedly between them in Scottish accents about the presentation on Narratives in Painting. Rose decides quickly that she'll follow them to wherever they're going, stepping off the lift as they exit on the ground floor, high-heeled shoes clicking underneath them.

She follows behind them for a minute before one, with lace on her dress and flowers in her hair, turns suddenly, glancing over at Rose. She settles her hazel eyes on her, and Rose feels anxious all of a sudden, wondering if perhaps they wanted her to leave them alone.

"Hello!" the redhead girl says brightly, tucking a strand of hair behind her pierced ear. "Are you headed to the presentation in conference room 103B then?"

Rose nods, sticking out her hand for the other girl to shake. "'m Rose. I was just trying to see where you all were going, so I figured I'd just follow you. Sorry if you didn't want me to-"

"It's no problem at all," she says, shaking Rose's hand enthusiastically. "We all just met on our floors, figured we'd walk over together. I'm Amy. Just follow us and you'll be fine!" She turns on her precariously high heel and hooks her arm through Rose's. "So then. You trying to get into the swing of things too? Make connections, actually find work, all that rot?"

"Mhm," she hums, tying her hair into braids idly as they walk, "I'm just getting into all of it now. My teacher said I should give one of these things a try if I want to find good jobs in the industry."

Amy laughs, a bright, bubbly sound that screams of both experience and innocence, like the tiger and the lamb melded together, a paradox that William Blake wouldn't be able to unravel. She seems to Rose to be like the poem of the crocodile in _Alice in Wonderland_. (_H__ow cheerfully he seems to grin, how neatly spreads his claws._) Rose reflects that Amy seems to be the same way, both childlike and dangerous. "I know how you feel. Anything beats being a kissogram, I'll tell you that."

"Really?" At Amy's self-deprecating nod she shudders. "Eugh. At least I only work at Henrik's. Much better than having to kiss strangers."

"Well, money is money is money. It's all the same in the end. Aaand here we are," she announces, sweeping her hand around the room. They sit together on one of the right hand rows as more people wander in, searching for seats. Amy tucks her long, white legs underneath her cream-coloured dress as she perches herself on the folding chair, while Rose crosses hers as she angles herself toward the front.

A short, balding man in a coat and tie waddles his way across the stage, and Amy groans under her breath a little bit. "Here we go," she mutters, flipping open her spiral notebook and clicking open her ballpoint pen.

It's interesting, to say the least. Rose listens, writes, doodles little constellations in the corner of the bright white page, laughs at the appropriate times, and claps when it's over. Amy falls asleep halfway through, and Rose has to shake her awake at the end. She comes to as her portfolio falls off of her lap, the strap of her purse sliding down her thin shoulder.

Rose snatches one of his business cards as she exits the room, Amy trudging halfheartedly behind. She twirls her bag around her arm as she turns to the redhead, asks, "Why did you go to the presentation if you were just gonna fall asleep?"

"Nothing else to do," she explains in return, her accent somehow both sharp and lilting. "I'm in photography mostly, I used to model a bit in uni. And that boring little man only focused on paints. Why, 're you in painting?"

Rose nods as they walk along the rows of tables and pamphlets and triptych boards calling for young artists. Amy makes a little humming noise in response, her long legs carrying her just ahead of Rose, so that she has to half-run to catch up. "Are you here with anyone?"

Amy glances at her, scrunches her nose in thought. "Yeah. My husband. We're just married, you know? He insisted on coming along. We live in London."

Rose smiles at the connection. "Me too! About living in London, not about the husband."

"Wait," Amy says abruptly, stopping in her tracks by one of the booths. "This is it."

"What's it?"

Amy smiles wide, bares her perfectly straight teeth. "Torchwood." At Rose's confused expression, she sighs, lifts her shoulders to her ears and holds out her hands. "Don't tell me you've never heard of Torchwood? It's, like, _the_ up-and-coming studio center in London. Apparently they'll hire you if you have any talent, regardless of how much experience you have. Come on, we _have_ to go see it." She pulls Rose by her wrists to the table, slams her hands down on the white-cloth top with a little lift of her eyebrows, as if _saying here it is, aren't you excited?_

A man slouches in his chair behind the table, his feet propped above it like a teenager, and he twiddles with his floppy hair until Amy gives a harrumph of irritation at not being noticed. He glances up, straightening to a sitting position. He gives Amy a once-over, running his eyes along her frame until she holds up her left hand, points to the ring, and he shifts his eyes away to Rose. "Hello there. How can I help you ladies?"

"You're with Torchwood, yeah?" Rose asks, grabbing one of the papers and filing it carefully between the pages of her notebook.

"I represent them," he explains, pointing to his name badge, which says nothing on it but, "Hello, I'm: AN INTERN," in a messy scrawl. "My boss is gone for dinner, and I'm holding down the fort." He runs his fingers along his suspenders as he stands, straightens his red bow tie and Rose nearly has to stop herself from giggling outright. She doesn't manage to contain her smile, and he looks at her questioningly until she points to his neck. "Oh, this? Just you wait for these to get popular again. Bow ties are cool."

"I'm Amy," she interjects suddenly, holding out her hand for him to shake, which he does, "Pond. I was wondering if you could tell Rose an' me about any jobs you're offering in London."

"Well," he says, looping his voice around the syllable, "as you can see, I'm an intern, and those are the only positions we're offering currently. However," he scrambles for the right papers under his chair, "the job does pay, if not the best wages, and you have a great chance of being able to move up in your respective departments if you manage to hang on for more than a year."

"How long have you been there?" Rose asks, curious.

He half-grins, the corners of his mouth quirking up, and he tilts his head forward in a quasi-nod. "Eleven months. Almost there. If you need any more information, my name is Joseph. Just call the number on there and ask for me or one of my bosses or something."

"Thanks, I will," Amy says idly, turning around to wander off somewhere else. Rose remains put, asks more questions about Torchwood, which seems to be as mysterious and vague as its name. Joseph good-naturedly sticks out all of her interrogation, eventually inviting her to sit in the chair next to him as he explains more.

"Do you-" She pauses, trying to phrase the question in the right way. "Do you need, like, A-levels in order to be considered for one of the positions?"

He pauses, too, scratches the back of his head with his pen. "They prefer people with more advanced education, yeah, but it's not a prerequisite for applying or actually getting an internship. There's a few people who are in the other departments who don't have A-levels who landed a job. If you'd like to get yours while working there they'll help you out with that, too. It all depends, really."

Rose nods her head determinedly. She can deal with "it all depends." She always has.

Amy shows up again a half-hour later with a lanky, big-nosed man in tow. He's handsome, in a shy, scruffy kind of way. It's obvious to anyone that they are a couple in the way they always seem to be in contact, holding hands, nudging shoulders. "Joseph, Rose, this here's my husband, Rory." He waves one hand, settling the other around his wife's waist as she leans into him, reaches around to give him a peck on the cheek. Rose looks away, not sure if the entire exchange is something she's actually meant to be seeing. When she turns, she can see Joseph avoiding staring, too, glancing down at the floor to give them a moment.

"Well," he says after a beat of silence, standing up and stretching his thin, cigarette legs, "I'm starving. Would any of you care to join me in eating actual real food that is not from a train station or an airport?"

"Yes," Rory whispers softly through his teeth, pumping his fist in the air. "This one here never feeds me."

Amy mock-hits his arm. "I feed him, he's just always this concave."

They manage to send Rory to get them McDonald's, Amy pulling up a chair to sit down and talk to Joseph more about Torchwood. When Rose hears about some of the projects they seem to be working on, she understands why Amy was so excited about the center.

"It's all very underground," she explains to Rose while Joseph nods somberly. "Trust me though, by this time next year all of their booths at these conferences with be full of young, hip, starving artists. Just you wait." Behind her, Joseph opens his hands wide, spreads his fingers apart and waggles them, mouths "just you wait," in exaggerated motions. Rose laughs.

"So," Amy turns to Joseph and pokes at his knee, "what exactly do you do over at Torchwood?"

"Graphic design," he yawns out, "just in the department by technicality though. Mostly I just get coffee and file reports. S'pose it beats working somewhere else, doing the same thing without any real chance of doing something I want to do. My boss says there's a job opening up to do actual work. And you're in photography, yeah? They'll have plenty of space. It's the toughest department there is."

Amy smirks, trading a glance with Rose. "I can handle it. Trust me."

Joseph smiles, obviously impressed. "I'll put in a good word when I get back to the city. And you, Rose? You're doing painting, right or illustration? Those two are the hardest to get your foot in the door, but once you're in, you're in." He stretches out his long arms, settling one over the back of Rose's chair as Rory approaches once more, this time carrying four bags of fast food. "Wonderful, Rory! Geronimo!"

Rose quirks an eyebrow in confusion. "We're not jumping or anything."

"I meant into the food." He mimes diving into his ten piece chicken nuggets, grabbing one out of the carton and eating it in one bite, and Rose giggles at his antics. Like Amy, he's a disconcerting mix of cynicism and whimsy, of nostalgia and modernity, and once more Rose is reminded of literature, reflects that he is just like Peter Pan, in the way he moves and speaks and thinks. (_It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly._)

Rory snorts in amusement as he bites into his own burger, letting out a moan that has Amy nudging him with her shoulder, though seconds later she makes the same noise as she begins her own food. Rose likes Rory the most, she decides. From the little she's seen of him, he is the best of all of them, as genuinely good and true and loving as they come. Amy is lucky to have him, she reflects.

"You two are a pair," Rose laughs as she leans back in her chair, Joseph's hand just brushing against her shoulder across the back of the seat. She has a warm feeling in her stomach, like this is the place she should be, the people she should be with, people like the Doctor who _get everything_, who don't mind the fact that she works at a department store, who don't blink when she tells them she hasn't got her A-levels.

Amy is listing to Joseph and Rory every presentation she wants to attend tomorrow, the last day of the conference, and she turns to Rose suddenly, her eyes alight with excitement, and says, "Did you want to come out with us tomorrow?"

Rose wipes the back of her hand across her mouth, swallows her food. "Where to?"

"There's a great club nearby," Joseph explains, turning to her, "that Amy was just telling us about. What's is called again?"

"Dalek." Amy says dryly. "The owner has a thing for made-up words. Apparently, it's one of his creations, some alien robot thing. It's the logo of the place."

"Looks like a glorified tin can if you ask me," Rory says, sipping at his soda.

Amy scoffs, turns to Rose once more. "You in, Rose?"

She looks from face to face, all of them looking at her expectantly. "Yeah," she breathes, nodding her head. "Sounds like fun."

Amy and Rory cheer, Joseph holding out his hand to high-five her, and she does. She can hear the sounds of people moving around them, going from booth to booth, but never stopping by the one that could lead them out of whatever it is they're trying to escape or take them to whatever it is they're trying to go to. She feels like she's accomplished something, taken a step in the right direction, and it all just feels-

The air around them is cool and clean, and it leaves a peppermint taste in Rose's mouth when she breathes it in to speak.

Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

* * *

A/N: Amy and Rory and Eleven! I based a lot of Eleven's personality on the fact that Matt Smith wears a lot of hipster clothes and is kinda dry in his humor, but still whimsical. I don't actually know much about studio centers, but I'm basically thinking that like real Torchwood, artsy Torchwood would be all about having pull in everything it can, so it's essentially like this massive underground art company with lots of employees and lots of departments. I will be stopping this at around 13 chapters. I think a story at around 40-45k words is a good length for my first full-length fic. Thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter! Keep reading and reviewing and all those wonderful things.

Part 2 of this will be posted on Friday, so everyone look out for that. Of course I wasn't just going to leave you all hanging for a whole week without sufficient amounts of Doctor in this chapter!

(Side note: found out the new Doctor, huh? I like him.)


	11. Midas (Part Two)

11.

"and you made me familiar to you in the dark." magic vs. midas by sunset rubdown

(_part two_)

She knocks on his door impatiently, ramming her hand against the blue painted wood as she calls through the wall, "Doctor! Doctor, wake up!" She twirls around in the hall, the skirt of her dress fluttering prettily beneath her, and she grins at the look of it. Amy lent her some clothing, and though most of it was too big or too tight, she found one that fit perfectly, that Amy decided to let her keep.

She continues her assault against the door, keeping time with her smooth knuckles and white wrists as she waits for him. She was disappointed the previous day when he hadn't shown up downstairs at all, and today she is determined to drag him with her to everything, show him all of the presentations and lectures she'll be going to, point out all the professionals she's met, display her _mentor-mate-better-than-a-boyfriend_ to Amy and Rory and Joseph.

He finally opens up the door after several minutes, causing Rose to nearly fall into him as the solid object is abruptly replaced with air. He glares down at her, furrowing him brow as she looks excitedly up at him. "What the bleedin' hell are you doing, Rose?"

She smiles, wide and manic, holds up her hand for him to high-five. "It's the last day of everything, an' you missed all of yesterday, so we're going down together and seein' everything and doin' everything, and we're gonna have fun, Doctor, so there! Get excited!"

He blinks, leaving her hanging on the high-five. "You know what they call me at the hospital-"

"The Oncoming Storm, yeah, I've heard it all before."

"Then I suggest," he says, opening the door wider to let her in, "that you not try to wake me up before eight o' clock on a day when I'm not working." She only grins up at him once more, the tip of her tongue poking out through her teeth, and this time when he looks at her mouth it's as obvious as the nose on his face.

She steps through, glancing around the still made-up room, the only evidence that someone is staying there being the open suitcase on the ground and crumpled sheets. Outside, there is a picturesque view of the city, and Rose wanders over to look down at the people passing by in grey-mottled clothing and oxford shoes, the nearly identical buildings that crowd together for space like jostling schoolchildren, the mock-Grecian monuments at the top of the strikingly green Carlton Hill.

(Yesterday, as they were walking through the city, he had pointed to it, promised to take her there before the train on the day they leave.

"I'm sure it would be a beautiful view," she said, looking up at the grassy slope, and like every single movie cliche there was the Doctor, gazing at her as he agreed with a soft, "Yeah. Absolutely beautiful.")

She turns back to him just as he pulls his white t-shirt over his head by the neck before heading into the loo, and she quickly looks away with a quiet gasp, because of course he would be absolutely gorgeous on top of everything else. He can't just be satisfied that she's in love with him, so clearly he has to be fit and perfect in every physical way too. Figures, really.

She drums her fingers along the dresser as she waits, crossing her left leg over her right at the ankles, and she can hear the sounds of traffic in the streets below, still slow and heavy, most of the city still fast asleep on its day off.

She hears the sound of the door clicking open, and the Doctor appears in front of her wearing his uniform of dark grey leather, hair tamed into acceptably coarse curls. She wonders when he decided to actually grow it out a bit.

"Okay, then," he says, yawning one final time before shaking the sleep from his head. "Are we going or what?"

She nods, her braid swinging behind her back as she turns dramatically on her heel to go to the door. "Are you ready for all these young, cool, hip artist-types?"

He laughs, shaking his head. "Rose, you could be described as many things, but 'hip' is not one of them."

"No, look at how good I look! Look at my beautiful gown, Doctor! Amy let me have it." He quirks a brow, looking down at her in confusion. "I'm introducing her and Rory and Joseph to you soon. If you'd have come down yesterday, you would've met 'em already." She holds her hand out for him to take, which he bypasses, heading straight to the door instead.

She frowns a bit in the lift when he remains separate still, until finally she huffs and grabs his hand anyway. He pulls it back quickly, and she looks up at him in confusion.

"I told you not to wake me up before eight!" he exclaims.

"I was hungry and breakfast fills up quick!"

"Well, fine, then you don't get your hand held, so there."

She smirks, turning away. "You're impossible."

He laughs at the look of dejection on her face and pulls her underneath his arm, finally taking her hand in his, folding his fingers over her palm. She smiles, proud of her success, as they walk off onto the ground floor to get food.

"Did you ever notice," he says as he picks out a blueberry muffin, "that all of our arguments are about food?"

She shrugs, pouring milk into her cereal. "'s only because the first time we ate together you stole all my chips. I don't think I ever got over that."

He grins at her at they sit at one of the tables in the dining room. "Our first date."

She doesn't respond to that. She thinks that maybe he doesn't realize all of the implications of what he just said. Even if he does, he doesn't want her to acknowledge that she does. She digs into her Fruit Loops and leaves it at that.

It's a better day than it was the day before, the light coming through the windows high on the wall more yellow than green, and Rose thinks that it must be lovely weather outside, too. She wonders if Amy will be able to shoot some of the scenery, the climbing buildings and the unfocused lights of traffic and the lavender-grey tinge that paints the city in colors like Monet, unfocused water lilies and brush strokes of orange and gold. She hopes it will be this nice tomorrow, for when she and the Doctor take a walk together.

They finish eating, Rose explaining excitedly to the Doctor all about meeting Amy and Rory and Joseph, pointing to the notes she took in her little pink notebook and the various names and numbers she scratched carefully onto the sides of the paper. At one point, he pokes at one of the stars groups she sketched after dinner, and asks quietly, "That the Lynx?"

She smiles. "'f course. Here's Orion, too, since that's the only one you really know."

"I know all the ones you told me about."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He stands, clapping his hands together. "Well then. Shall we get going then?" He proffers his hand to her, a fine gentleman, and she takes it as a lady would, as if she were all delicate lace and golden hair, like something out of a fairy tale. But it's better than that even, she thinks.

He feels warm and solid and real underneath her fingers, as strong and constant as the land, as overwhelmingly, certainly, achingly beautiful as the stars.

When he looks down at her and smiles, she thinks perhaps she can see all of that in his clear, blue eyes, too.

She hands him her pen halfway through the lecture she takes him to because he's shaking, moving his knee in a twitch, up down up down, like he can't just _stay_. As soon as he takes the pen and paper, though, he doesn't even use them, simply starts clicking it, open close open close, like a madman. She wonders how he manages to get through surgery without starting this restless shaking and accidentally severing an artery or something else important.

He's a paradox wrapped in leather, the Doctor, a surgeon with calloused hands, scarred fingers, and an inability to sit still, military in discipline and mercurial in movement, unbearably happy and viciously angry, all at once.

She scoffs at him, inattentive as a child in church, and he looks at her with puppy-dog eyes, confused and saddened by her disapproval. She smiles up at him in reassurance, and he grins in pride as he goes back to his nervous ticks.

She explains in an excited rush all about Torchwood as they pass by its booth, which is filled with all the people that weren't there yesterday, though Joseph is absent. He must have gotten the worst shift then.

"So," he says breezily, "when am I going to meet these friends of yours?" He would be the picture of nonchalance if it weren't for the way his fingers clench anxiously the ends of his jacket sleeves, and she pretends not to notice that it's only a valiant attempt at being casual.

"I told you, tonight." She quickly dodges someone sprinting through the room, and she wonders if they're late. "We're all going out."

"'We're all'?"

"Yeah, you're comin' too, Doctor, just said that. Not gonna go without my knight in shining armour, not gonna have a repeat of last time."

(She doesn't mention that she doesn't exactly regret _last time_, with her vague memories of blurred streetlights and pushing the monster away and _run are you okay don't worry I'll help you_.)

He blinks at her, clicks his teeth together with an audible snap. "Alright then," he murmurs, taking her hand in his. "What time will it be?"

She shrugs. "Ten-ish. Ten-thirty. Dunno. Amy said she'd text me when they're goin'. I'll just knock on your door, yeah?"

He nods in confirmation, steering her over to get lunch.

She tries her best to hide the way it feels when he leads her with a hand at the small of her back rather than pulling her along behind him. She can see that he pretends not to realize it anyway.

* * *

The sky is dark, a deep, indigo-violet colour, like an Indian fabric with a scattering of bright, glassy pins woven in between the threads. When the cars pass by on the winding streets, their headlights illuminate the blackness until she looks like only her silhouette, staticky edges of wavy, red hair and long, long legs.

Rose walks over to Amy, slightly ahead of the still-reticent Doctor, and taps the other woman on the shoulder in greeting. "Hey, Amy." She glances around, suddenly noticing that she is alone. "Where're Rory and Joseph?"

Amy huffs, seeming to prepare herself for a story. "Well, Rory was fine this morning, absolutely perfect, but he said about an hour ago he didn't feel up for going out. So he's staying in. Joseph's gonna meet us there."

"What's this place called again?" the Doctor asks, looking from Amy to Rose and back.

Amy smiles, holds out her hand for him to shake, which he does. "It's called Dalek. Apparently it's pretty popular here. I wouldn't know, though, I'm from Inverness."

"Dalek?" At Amy's nod, he sputters. "Isn't that place s'posed to be- I dunno. Dangerous?"

She nods, her hair falling in wisps around her heart-shaped face. "It's not in the best area, yeah, but it'll be fine. Joseph's been before."

Rose shrugs, bringing together her thin shoulder blades as she stretches her back. "Yeah, it'll be fine, Doctor. Oh," she pauses, realizing she never made introductions, "Doctor, this is Amy, who I was telling you about. Amy, this is the Doctor."

Amy smirks, crossing her arms. "Just the Doctor?" He nods, smiling and waving a bit. "Doctor who, exactly?"

"Just the Doctor," Rose laughs, looping her arm through Amy's elbow. "We should be getting on then, yeah?" Amy tilts her head, motioning for the Doctor to follow as they begin walking. Rose can practically hear him rolling his eyes as he stomps along behind, his boots making a harsh sound on the pavement. At one point, Amy drops her arm back to her side to point at something in a shop window, and he maneuvers his way by Rose's side again, nudging her with his shoulder as he passes.

She doesn't realize until they've arrived at the club what exactly she has gotten herself into.

The building is unassuming, tiny-looking, only just grey brick and a plain wood door, but as Amy saunters up, flashing her ID for the bouncer, waving Rose and the Doctor inside, she realizes quickly that it's much, much bigger on the inside. The people, some of them recognizable to her as guests at the hotel, other artists, look to be moving in a giant clump, bobbing up and down to electronic wails and multi-coloured strobe lights. She doesn't realize until he's standing right in front of them that Joseph has already arrived.

"Hey there!" he shouts over the thump of a mechanical baseline. "Fancy seeing you here!"

Amy smiles, wide, bright, and totally absorbed, at the man in front of her. Rose turns to the Doctor as she introduces him, amused to see that he looks as uncomfortable as she feels. Joseph drags Amy by the hand to the floor, moving his arms around his head in a ridiculous attempt at dancing that has Rose laughing. She looks up at the Doctor, raising her eyebrows and gesturing to her friends as if to say, "well, come on then."

He glances around the room, just over her head, and looks down at her again. "Nah," he yells over the music, "I think I'll just be heading back." He gives her a small wave of his hand, a quick salute, before slipping through the mass of people by the door and walking out through the front.

For a moment, Rose just stands there. It isn't like the Doctor to leave her by herself at something, even if he trusts her enough to find her own way home. But still.

This thought is enough to move Rose into following after him, her red high heels clicking along the sidewalk as she exits the building, calls after him, "Doctor!" She catches up as he waits at the corner, the skirt of her dress sliding up against her thighs so that she has to pull the tight material down to its proper length as she approaches him. "You're leaving?"

She watches him as he avoids watching her, his Adam's apple shifting slightly in his throat, his normally pale blue eyes dark in the dim street. "That's not my scene, Rose. Hasn't been for years. It's fine. I'll just go back to the hotel and make sure to wake you up on time tomorrow. Go on. Have fun."

She stares at him, skeptical but still knowing that he won't budge on this issue. "Okay. I guess I'll just be seeing you later, yeah? I'll make sure to text when I'm on my way home."

He nods in response, clenching his jaw tight, and walks away once more, hailing a taxi effortlessly with just a lift of his finger by a red light. She chuckles to herself, shaking her head, and turns back to the club. She can have fun without the Doctor, she decides. Probably.

All in all, she reflects as she dances with Amy and Joseph, she can. The music is still horribly loud and grating, something that she hears Joseph refer to as EDM ("Electronic dance music," he explains in a shout as he hands her a drink, "'s big in the States, too, I've heard."). She and Amy somehow manage to fend off any unwanted attention through the process of constantly pointing at her wedding ring or using Joseph as a protective shield. Rose had almost forgotten what it was like to be with people in her own age group, who actually go out and do crazy things just because. Even when she was going with Jimmy, back when she thought every night would be like this, most nights just ended with her holding back someone else's hair, or else trying to hold back her own.

It's fun. She feels happy.

She only realizes how late it's gotten when she flips open her phone at the bar to avoid talking to some grimy bloke who won't leave her alone. She corners Amy and Joseph, who has managed to acquire several other female friends over the course of the night, to go with her back to the hotel.

They catch a cab at the same corner where the Doctor left, the three of them smashed in together in the backseat, Amy complaining loudly about her sore feet and Joseph attempting to recreate the music they played with a series of high-pitched noises. She texts the Doctor as they walk up to the building and manages to arrive on her floor in one piece.

Only when she actually gets to her door, though, does she realize that she's lost her keycard.

This is the moment, here, that Rose will look back on for years to come. For a while, she will wish she had simply gone back downstairs, asked for another way in, bothered whoever was stuck with the night shift, and been done with it. She will wish desperately that she hadn't had the brilliant idea of simply knocking on the Doctor's door to get into her room, because she knows that she left the door open on her side, even if he left his shut. Later, though, after the regret, she'll think maybe it was something like fate, though the Doctor will tell her that's of course it was just her being forgetful, or it was a hole in her purse, or someone stole the card, or any number of logical explanations. She'll remind him of the fact that he once told her that logic is a way to be wrong with conviction. He'll never know what to say to that.

Either way, when Rose reaches into her clutch for a key to her room that isn't there, it changes everything.

She groans as she mutters a curse through her teeth, rifles through the contents of her bag once more, and finally knocks on the door next to hers.

"Doctor," she calls softly through the wood, trying not to disturb anyone else on the floor. She's reminded of the way she woke him up in the morning, with measured beats and a flickering dress. "Doctor, are you awake?" She can hear a click, like a light turning on, heavy footsteps, and finally the unmistakeable opening of a lock.

He opens the door slowly, his face totally unreadable as he steps aside to let her through. "Did you have fun?" he mutters, more to himself than to her, though she doesn't realize this until later.

She nods happily, twirls a bit as he shuts the door. "Yeah, it was great. Joseph and Amy are terrible dancers, but I think I managed to save face despite that, don't you?" She smiles at him, her signature grin with her tongue in between her teeth, but when she turns around to look at him he still doesn't look any better, like her Doctor should. He looks almost angry. "What's you problem, then?"

He gives a derisive snort, his face twisting from careful neutrality to something like irritation. "Really? What's my problem?" At her nod of annoyance he chuckles, an empty sound that sets her teeth on edge. "My problem is the fact that you stayed out till two in the bloody morning without so much as a phone call, and this was only after you dragged me to that horrible Dalek-thing in the first place."

She can feel the blood draining from her face in anger as she retaliates, shoots back, "You're not my bloody father, alright, so why don't you just keep your opinions to yourself? And I asked you if you wanted to stay, and _you_ were the one who said no and left me alone. Just like Jimmy did. Honestly, it's giving me whiplash, trying to keep up with all of your mood-swings."

"Don't compare me to that good-for-nothing fuck-wit, how about that? And I know I'm not your father, I'm telling you this as your-"

"As my what, as my friend? Because you and I both know this goes way beyond friendship, whatever this is. If this is what you call being friendly you must be from another fucking _planet_, because this isn't how you act with a friend." She tries to reign the words in even as she says them, but she can't seem to stop herself.

"Oh, really, and how do I act, Rose?" He folds his arm across his chest, gives her a look of disbelief. Which of course only makes her that much more certain of her point.

"The touching and the holding hands and the lookin' at me. And don't say it's just because you're a tactile person because I've had one night stands who are less tactile than that, Doctor, so why don't you just say whatever it is you really want to say so I can get some bloody sleep?"

She's out of breath from her whisper-shouting, both of them still trying to keep their voices low so as not to disturb anyone else, and she stands still now, trying to work some air back into her lungs. He stands in the same way, the lines of his body as tense as a drawn wire, his teeth slightly apart as he tries to speak but is unable to think of any words.

She scoffs, rolls her eyes, and "Yeah, that's what I thought." She turns away, settling her hand on the doorknob to leave.

But then all at once there he is, grabbing her by her arm to pull her back to him, the Oncoming Storm once more, all bright blue eyes clouded by overblown pupils and an oversized hand warm on her waist and then suddenly he's closer than he normally is, his breath breezing feather-light across her lips as he whispers, "Wait. Just." Takes a breath, in and out. In. Out. "Wait."

She has one hand on his chest, another still on the door handle, and he pulls it to him with his left hand, threads their fingers together, holds the connection up next to their bodies like a dance. "Wait. Stay here."

She swallows, nods her head just slightly, just a fraction of an inch up and down. The moon outside is bright and huge, and she can see it reflected in his dark pupils, his lashes just curling over his irises, looking like gold in the white light.

And then he is surging forward, lacing his fingers through her golden cornstalk hair. Kissing her with an open mouth, a hot tongue that tastes still like strawberries and water, and she doesn't even hesitate to respond in kind. She doesn't even think she would know how to do anything else. When he moves forward, presses her up against the door with a soft growl coming from the back of his throat, she doesn't think at all, anymore.

She can hear the sounds of slow and disparate traffic still on the streets as they move across the room, but then she can't hear even that as the air is filled with sounds of a different sort, their voices mixing in the quiet of the dark like violins, like the little fluttery breaths of a singer in between his words.

Soft sighs of two silhouettes against a million little pinpricks of stars, the light of the full moon casting shadows on the bones of her thin wrists, the pale skin of his shoulder blades, curving sharp and smooth on his back like wings.

Like a half-drawn breath, inhaled from the space between her teeth.

* * *

A/N: AHHHHHHHHHH. Hopefully that was tame enough to keep it T. I've seen worse, so I think we're good.

Next week I'll update on Tuesday as usual, so you guys know. Thank you for reading and reviewing! And make sure you tell me all about your thoughts on this chapter. Hopefully you guys don't think it's very out of character, because I don't really.

But also AHHHHHHHHH.


	12. Tomorrow

12.

"we'll be nothing but dust, just the outlines of our hands." tomorrow by daughter

She wakes in the early hours of the morning, before even the sun would dare to show its face, when the light is no longer pitch black but a sort of melancholy blue-grey. There is a thumping underneath her ear, a slow double-beat of someone else's heart, sounding like a metronome. She keeps time with it, measures seconds and minutes as if with a glass pouring water into a silver dish in exact specified amounts, clear, thin fluid spiraling, spiraling through. She falls asleep again to the sound, curls her spidery fingers around his shoulder and watches the way her hair slips against his skin like velvet ribbons.

Soft breath, in and out. In. Out.

Fluttering her eyelashes against the skin underneath, tightening her hands into clenched fists around empty space. Turning, turning, stretching her limbs around the cold sheets.

She opens her eyes slowly, blinking at the sudden brightness in the room. Glancing over at the window, she can see that the curtains have been peeled back, letting in the yellow light. It's too pale, too blinding, and she tries to close her eyes again, recapture the sleep that she had found so comfortable.

Finally she admits defeat, groaning as she pushes herself up and stretches, arching her spine as she shakes the last bits of sleep from her head. She glances around the room, disappointed to find it empty and silent, save for the sounds coming from outside in the hall, where she can hear other guests leaving to go home. She checks the clock, relieved to see that she hasn't slept in much, only until nine. The train's not until eleven, so it should be fine, although they'll probably have to skip their walk. If the Doctor comes back, that is.

(She doesn't allow herself to think about the other possibility.)

She washes her face, takes a shower, and promptly realizes she doesn't have anything to wear but her dress from the night before. She remedies this by stepping into her own room and pulling on her pink sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, deciding that while she's there she might as well pack up the rest of her things for the train ride home. The whole process takes less than fifteen minutes, and by the time she pulls her luggage into the Doctor's room it's only a quarter to ten, and he still isn't back.

She turns on the telly, to the weather (_good, fair, chance of rain_), to the news (_teenager died in a car wreck_), to cartoons (_Jake the Dog and Finn the Human, the fun will never end!_), to a reality show (_You're not the father!_), until she finally just shuts it off. Sits in silence. Watches her own reflection on the black TV screen.

Listens as she hear the shuffle and click of the door opening. Stares at the Doctor as he walks over and hands her a styrofoam coffee cup with a rough, "Here." She checks the clock on the night stand where her father's necklace lies shining next to the flashing numbers (_10:15_).

She supposes they've missed the walk up Carlton Hill, then (all green and shimmering in the sun because it was supposed to be a good day today, it really, really was).

She doesn't speak for fear of her voice coming out all wrong, creaking with rust from disuse, like the Tin Man in the old Judy Garland film but worse because she's still flesh and bone, still _human_.

"We should get going then," he mutters, standing up from his position leaning against the windowsill, and he walks over to his suitcase to pile his things back in. He jerks his head to the door, signaling for her to follow. She stands, rolling her shoulders and grabbing her own things. She makes sure to compose her face into an innocent expression when she "accidentally" bumps into him on the way out the door.

They don't speak on the way downstairs, in the cab ride, as they pile themselves into the train cart and avoid each others' gaze (_careful, careful, make it look natural_) while they sit without so much as a cough to break the quiet.

When the train begins to move forward slowly, chugging like a mechanical insect on the way back to London is when Rose finally speaks. "So're we gonna talk about this then?"

He sighs, clicks his tongue between his teeth. "Not here."

"'Not here' is not good enough, when are we gonna talk about it?"

"I said," he intones, turning his eyes, both of them as cold and blue as ice, "not here."

She scoffs, half-smirks, as she says in reply, "You're regressing, Doctor."

He seethes under her gaze. "So what if I am? It's my regression."

"No," she responds sharply, narrowing her gaze, "no, it's mine now, too."

He seems about to respond when he thinks better of it and falls silent once more. She decides to let it drop too, even though she'd much rather get over whatever it is he's torturing himself with as quickly as possible. She knows better than to argue with him in a semi-public place while they're still trapped in the same tin can for another five hours.

The British countryside is still gorgeous, though somehow less so this time around. At one point on their journey, she amuses herself by playing a game she used to as a kid, when she and Mickey would blink their eyes quickly to make everything look like a movie, like stop-motion. She almost laughs at how it looks, but stops once she turns to the Doctor and realizes she can't tell him about it without risk of letting something else slip.

She avoids doing anything interesting for the rest of the ride there, listening instead to the sounds of people walking up and down the narrow halls of the train, biting her tongue to keep from starting another conversation. When they eat, he doesn't steal any food from her plate, and she feels a bit like crying.

As they near the city once more, she can see dark clouds rolling in, already covering almost half of the buildings, and she tries not to laugh again at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, because wouldn't it be like that, like something out of a book, something out of an overly dramatic fairy tale?

Good, fair, chance of rain.

By the time they get off the train and walk out into the station, Rose is actually wondering what it is he's going to do now. He can't take her back to his flat without a way home, and they can't exactly go back to hers when Jackie might be there. She realizes suddenly as he calls for a cab and tells the driver the address where they're going.

By the time they make it to his father's studio the rain has hit the city, cold, grey water slicing against the windows of the car as they rush into the building. Rose's shoes click against the beige tiles in the hall as she follows the Doctor in, trying to keep up with his massive strides. She thinks suddenly how similar he looks to the night when she first saw him, in the dark alley with bruises on her forearms and liquor on her breath, or even how he looked on the night when his patient died on the table.

It's just how she thought it would happen. It's just as she feared it would happen.

"Dad," he calls as he enters the room, "I'm gonna need you to clear out."

Smith looks up from his canvas with a quizzical expression, K-9 copying his gesture from the floor. "What are you doing here then? I didn't expect to see you until Thursday."

"We need the space."

He huffs, dropping his brush onto the ledge of the easel. "Can't. I'm waiting for a student, they'll be here in forty minutes-"

"Then tell them to wait a bit longer," the Doctor tells him through clenched teeth. "I need this space now."

Smith pauses, suddenly noticing Rose standing stock-still in the doorframe. "What's going on, Johnny?" he asks quietly, an underlying menace running through his words, and she understands at once where the Doctor got his temperament from.

He looks nervous at the expression on his father's face, suddenly less certain than he had been a moment before, like a child about to be chewed out for some sin he's committed. "Just. We'll talk about it later, dad."

Smith nods his head determinedly, makes sure the Doctor is looking him in the eyes when he speaks. "You're damn right we'll talk about it later." He turns, grabbing his coat and whistling for K-9 to follow as he brushes past Rose on his way out, giving her a look of pleading as he does so.

Rose watches him as he walks away, his dog trailing loyally behind, and she turns back to the Doctor as she enters the room more completely. "You didn't have to do that, you know."

He huffs, backing up a little as he looks away. "I just wanted to give us a little privacy."

"Really? We've had plenty of time all day for privacy, what makes right now so bloody important?"

He glares at her, and for some reason the look of it sends shivers up her spine. (Not that she doesn't know exactly what reason it is, when just the night before he had been focusing all of that intensity on her, and thinking about it isn't going to do her any good so she might as well just-) "Weren't you the one who said you wanted to talk? Well here we are. Talking."

"Then tell me what the fuck is goin' on!" She exhales slowly, feeling her chest cave in, her lungs collapse, as she continues more calmly. "Tell me what you want."

"It was-"

"Don't you dare say it-"

"A mistake." He directs his gaze to his hands, fiddles with his fingers to avoid the force of Rose's unbelieving stare.

"You don't mean that," she says, growing more irritated. "No, I know you don't mean that."

"I do," he replies, his voice catching a bit on the words, like he can't get it out quite right, has to push through to say it, and she wants to shake him, scream at him for being so _bloody stupid_. "I do mean that."

"Well, why d'you think it's a mistake now, Doctor?" She watches his face for some sign of a reaction, but he's giving her nothing, has schooled his expression into careful blankness, though on him it looks more like resignation. "Didn't seem like you thought so when you were fucking me."

(And she hates that, despises the way she couldn't just say _but what about last night?_ because then she'd be like a character on a teenage drama, the whiny girl who is supposed to be sympathetic but who nobody roots for because there's no place for another pretty little victim. So she differentiates, rephrases it into something more visceral, more awful, and she hates that even more.)

"I didn't-" He stops, starts again. "I wasn't thinking. That's what I mean. I shouldn't have done that to you."

"Shouldn't have done what to me?" She tries to catch his gaze, steps forward to put herself into his field of vision. "You didn't do anything wrong. I was there too, and I wanted it too, you shouldn't-"

"I shouldn't have agreed. It was on me, I shouldn't have tried anything with you, I'm the adult here-"

"I'm an adult too, it's not like I'm underage, 'm a couple of years above underage to be sure. I can make my own decisions."

"But I'm should've been better about it, if I hadn't done anything, you would've moved on from whatever this is, this would've just been a passing fancy, and you would've gotten someone better."

"You are better," she interrupts, no longer able to stand what it is he's telling her. "And this never would've just been a passing fancy, even if nothing had happened. You should know, you've been here too, all this time, right here with me. You know."

"No," he says, shaking his head as he looks up to the ceiling, "no, you'll find someone good for you, not a bitter old man who's already on his way out. You'll find a good bloke your own age, like that Joseph kid, and you'll be better off without me."

"But I don't want him!" she bursts out, trying to reach for his hands, but he pulls away, just out of reach, like some animal with eyes as large and horrible as a bull and a red hot mouth filled with rotting teeth, like a monster in a maze that she just can't reach. "Doctor, please, I've been trying to tell you. I want y-"

"But you shouldn't want me!" he says, his voice getting a bit louder, and she can practically feel the panic bubbling up through his throat, forcing it's way out through his teeth. "You shouldn't! It wouldn't end well, you're young and beautiful and perfect, and I'm not gonna take that away because I _wanted you_." He turns from her, pacing a bit as he continues on. "I won't do that to you, please don't tell me- Just don't. I'm too old, I'm too broken, I'm not good, not for you at least-"

"Wait-" She reaches for him once more, but he wrenches his hands from her grasp, his eyes darting around the room, settling everywhere but her.

"Don't say anything else, I'm can't do this if you keep sayin' things like that."

"Please, Doctor, just _stop_-"

"I can say it however you like if you want me to explain, I'll write you a bloody poem or a novel or a song or I'll paint a picture for you, but you need to get away from me, you need someone who can be with you the way you need him to."

"Stop it, now!"

"Nothing will work with me in your life, nothing grows here, nothing _survives_-"

"Well I am," she finally interjects. "Surviving. You say you're not good for me, but you are, you and I both know you are. If I hadn't met you I would still just be a shop girl without any ambition, I wouldn't want to do anything but sit at home watching Mickey watch football, watching Jackie watch the plants, and I would've been _okay_ with it, that's the worst part. But meeting you, doin' things with you, things changed. I'm _happy_ now, actually honest to god happy, so don't say that you somehow ruined me by being here. I'd rather be here than anywhere else. Believe you me, I'd much rather be here."

He sighs, searching for words. "I don't think," he begins, stops. Rearranges what he wants to say in his mind. She can practically see the cogs turning, can practically feel the way he's weakening on his resolve. "I won't be good for you, Rose. Not in the long run. I'm a lot- older than you, and we're at different stages in our lives, and just because I _can_ do something doesn't mean I should. You'll be fine without me, I know you will-"

"Of course I'll be fine without you, it doesn't mean I want you to leave, doesn't mean I want to be just _fine_-"

"But I have to." He finally takes her hand, the first contact they've had since he was whispering her own name into her ear like a prayer, like a sort of penance. (_Rose, like a supplication torn from his lips without him even knowing. Rose._) "You'll keep on going to the lessons, keep all of my books, but I don't think we can keep doing- whatever this is. I don't think Jackie would like it very much anyway." He attempts to smile, but his mouth fails him, twisting instead into a sort of grimace.

"We don't have to be like that, even," she insists, scrambling. "We can just be friends, you were right, it was a mistake, just don't cut me out like this." He drops her hand, draws his arm back to his side, composes his face carefully, arranging each feature into a mask, and the worst part is, she can see it all happening, even as she tries to keep him with her.

"I'm going to go," he says quietly, already brushing past her on his way out and this time she doesn't try to keep him, simply calls after him.

"Wait." He pauses mid-stride, turns his head so that she can only see his profile, and she thinks that if she were to draw him, this would be the moment, his eyelids fluttering closed as she speaks, his hands clenched shut. "I l-" Her voice catches on the word, and she pushes on, ignoring the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. "I _love_ you."

It doesn't stop him. It wouldn't stop him, she knew that, even as she said it. But she would rather he know, for sure, if this really is the end. When he responds it's not what she had imagined; she had imagined a denial, she had hoped for a confirmation that he feels the same, but when he finally responds after precious seconds of silence, it's like a question and an answer at once.

"Rose Tyler," he says, his voice hitching on the words.

And then he's gone, and she's alone once more.

* * *

She doesn't sleep that night. She had gotten home in the early hours of the evening, and Jackie hadn't pushed, hadn't prodded, and Rose was immensely grateful but now _she can't sleep_. The books stacked high around her bed look like brick walls, not protecting anymore but suffocating, and she stands, wrenches open the window.

She finds that if she arranges them in a certain way, very carefully, she can sit on the piles in front of the windows, and she watches the sun rise in the east, huge and glittering against the pale sky.

She supposes she's lucky that she still has time to get in a couple of hours of sleep before work as she idly flips her phone over in her hand. Count your blessings, she supposes.

(She doesn't really know why she's so calm about the whole thing. She thinks it's because it hasn't really hit her. As soon as she leaves the room, she'll have to deal with the real world, but right now, it's just an abstract thought, the fact that he just _left_ like that.)

Someone knocks on her door, and for a moment Rose pretends it's him, back already, but she doesn't turn around in excitement, just calls back, "Yeah, mum?"

Jackie pokes her head around the door, her eyes wide and worried. "You're still up?" Rose nods, and Jackie enters more fully, walks carefully over to where Rose is sitting still in front of the window. Rose knows she looks like shit, can feel her hair knotting at its roots, and she rubs the back of her hands over her eyes, smearing mascara and eyeliner underneath her lower lashes. Jackie makes a little clicking noise with her teeth, shoves more books in a pile in front of the window, and slowly sets herself on top of them, legs criss-crossed, mirroring Rose. She almost laughs at that, but remains silent. "You okay, sweetheart?"

Rose turns, avoiding Jackie's gaze.

"What happened on your trip? What did he do to you?"

"Nothin', mum," she replies, sighing, looking up at the ceiling. "He didn't hit me or anything, 'f that's what you think. You know he wouldn't."

"I'm your mother, it's my job to make absolutely sure." When Rose laughs a bit, Jackie smiles tightly. "So what _did_ he do?"

"How do you know he did something? Maybe I was the one who messed up."

"Because you wouldn't be nearly this upset if you had messed up. You're like your father you know. If you can fix something, you fix it, no questions, no complaints. And if you can't fix something, you don't stay up all night worrying about it anyway. So it was him." Jackie inspects her face more carefully, softening her gaze. "What happened, Rose?"

She blinks, some of her eyelashes sticking together in clumps. The sun is still coming up, and Rose digs her nails into her arm because she can feel the tears she kept at bay welling in the corners of her eyes. Her vision blurs, and suddenly the outside looks like an out-of-focus photograph, like little dots of light sparking against the pastel sky. "I don't- I didn't-"

"Oh god," Jackie pales, grasps Rose's hand in hers and continues more softly, delicately. "Did you...?" She doesn't need to finish the thought, and Rose knows suddenly that Jackie knew all of this was going to happen. While she only felt a vague sense that things were going to change, her mother saw the way it all laid out like a hand of cards, calculated the risk, and formed her conclusion much more quickly than she or the Doctor ever could.

Rose nods shakily, some stray tears finally escaping past her eyes, streaking down her cheeks in fast-drying tracks. Saltwater, just like the sea.

"Christ." Jackie heaves out a sigh, standing suddenly. "D'you want some tea? I'm gonna make some."

"Really, mum, right now?" she asks, laughing a little breathlessly.

She huffs in return, setting her hands on her hips. "I've got to process this new information, and I think you need a nice cup of tea and maybe some eggs. You're going to eat, you're going to cry, and you're going to talk to me. Are we clear, Rose Marion Tyler?" The stern set to Jackie's brow has Rose nodding, wiping her eyes with her hand as she stands to follow her mother to the kitchen.

When Jackie places the warm mug in Rose's hands she feels calmer, better already.

"So," she begins as she sets a plate of breakfast in front of her, "what exactly did he say after this all happened?"

She shrugs, shoveling some food into her mouth to get rid of the lump in her throat. After she finishes chewing, she speaks. "Dunno, really. It wasn't very specific." She pauses, remembering his words for clearly with food in her stomach. "You know, I used to think I wasn't good enough for him. Well, not not good enough, but. I didn't see how I could possibly hold his interest. He's totally different from everyone I've ever met, 's totally alien. But what he said. I think he thinks he's not good enough for me." She sighs, shifting her fork around her plate. "Or maybe he just doesn't feel the same way, I don't know."

"Rose." Jackie looks up then, gazing at her with already knowing eyes. "Lord knows I haven't liked the man, but trust me when I say this. He loves you. And I wouldn't be saying that unless I was absolutely sure. So it's not that he doesn't feel the same way, it's that you need to convince him that you do, and that he is what you want. Because he is what you want, right? So go after him."

"I don't really think it's that simple, mum. I already tried that, really, I did. I even told him we could just be friends if that's what he thinks is best, but he didn't go for it. He's too stubborn, he'd have to have statistics and surveys and a poll and a ten-page, double-spaced, Times New Roman, twelve point font essay written by me in order to even consider changing his mind. I mean, he barely does anything I ask him to anyway. I don't think he's even read _Daddy-Long-Legs_, and I've been asking him to for months. I think he just forgets he has it, and then makes up excuses." She chuckles a little bit. "No, just going directly to him wouldn't work."

Jackie hums a little in agreement. "Well, we'll see, I s'pose, won't we? But right now you should go to sleep. I'm calling you in sick." She takes Rose's plate to the sink, turning back once to give her daughter a kiss on the head, murmuring in her ear before she goes to the phone. "Don't worry, sweetheart. I know it seems like the end of the world right now, but it isn't. It really, really isn't."

Rose walks unsteadily back to her bedroom, the whole of the last few days suddenly catching up with her, and she feels exhausted, bone-tired actually, as she stumbles back into her bed. It still hurts, even after talking to her mum, her insides still ache like they've been hollowed out.

As she falls asleep, though, she notices suddenly that a blackbird is settling just next to her flowers, now fully in bloom, on the sill, and she thinks vaguely that it looks beautiful, the bright yellow and silky blue-black mixing together. It's gorgeous.

The room is bright as the sun comes up completely, but Rose is already asleep, her limbs tangling up in her sheets as the city moves outside.

* * *

A/N: Ugh the Doctor is the worst. I know some of you will be like, "oh, he wouldn't push her away like that because in the show by the end he believes he's good enough for her," but keep in mind, this is a human man experiencing entirely human feelings for a woman eighteen years his junior and on top of that he's already widowed and the worst the alien Doctor ever did was kiss her to save her life. If I were him, I'd freak out and regress a little too. But don't fret! All will be resolved next chapter! (*ooo spoilersssss*) Which will be the last chapter, unless I specify otherwise. Then there will be an epilogue, and then it will be complete. Thank you for all the lovely reviews, thank you for reading up to this point. Please keep doing so, it's da bomb.

Also, I'll be heading back to school in like a few days, so I may not be able to post on time for the next chapter. Hopefully I will, but if not, look out for that.


	13. Maps

13.

"wait. they don't love you like i love you." maps by yeah yeah yeahs

She can't go back even after it's over. The first time they had stopped being friends she had been able to compartmentalize, shove her emotions about him into the corner of her brain and carry on with Mickey and Shireen like nothing had happened. It's different now though, and if she lets herself think too long she can feel the emptiness overtake her.

So she moves, keeps moving, like a shark, gives her two weeks' notice at work and scours newspapers and websites, calls up that favour with Joseph and schedules an interview to be an intern in the illustration department, keeps going because if he taught her anything it's that to travel is to live, even if she can only travel staying in one place.

The air is cold, the stars blinking out in the dawn, and the sun rises over the buildings stacked like playing cards.

Outside, it's beginning to look more like autumn, the trees are almost completely bare, and the winding branches stretch to the sky in waving patterns. It makes her sad to see everything so thin and empty, and she remembers how he explained that the fall was his favourite season, how everything isn't decaying, but rather preparing to return, bright and better than ever.

(_Death, he said to her at the sight of her flowers beginning to wither, is a necessary part of rebirth._)

She traces the veins on her arms with cold hands, the blood winding along her wrists in blue lines, a roadmap of her life, her pulse, and she's not going to be reborn out of this because she _will not die from this_.

And she's awake at the crack of dawn because today is a very big day, and she can't sleep (just like a week ago, but now out of nerves instead of out of grief). She lays her clothing on her bedspread, switches from trousers to a skirt and back only to throw down a lace dress from work at the last minute, her hair in waves and eyes lined with black mascara.

She shuffles her food around her plate, Jackie still asleep in her room, and eventually gives up, dumps its contents into the trash and leaves the flat to kill some time walking around the city. She knows Peckham well enough to feel comfortable being by herself in the early morning, but she clings to the keys in her hands just in case.

The only people she sees are the early morning joggers, puffing out their breath like smoke into the air because the heat of the day hasn't set in yet. Everything is grey and stone, and she wonders why people seem to think that London is such a beautiful place.

She remembers, though, how after she met him (she shouldn't say his name) everything seemed more perfect, less rough around the edges. She thinks that maybe the people who want to see London just want to see their own love in the sharp, looking glass buildings, watch their own romance in the people on the street. It may also be because they don't realize that it's just like every other place in the world, just someone else's familiar space.

That is why she loves the stars after all, why she feels overwhelmed when looking at the bumps and ridges of the globe. No one can see it all, and that makes her want to see it more, search and devour and run until she gets tired. Of course she wouldn't. If she could, she would run forever.

She thinks maybe that would be lonely.

(_Better with two, she said to him the first time he told her about traveling the world, and he promised to take her wherever he went, and she should remind him of that, remind him of his oath when the city was still warm with summer and he'd looked at her pale legs shining in the sun and her tongue between her teeth. He wouldn't listen even if she told him to._)

On her way home she stands by the stoplight, ready to cross the street, and she feels a hand on her waist, not large and heavy and warm but thin, pale, cold, already rotting on a still moving corpse. She startles, turns.

Jimmy leans toward her, his new girlfriend leans against the brick wall outside the pub, and he smiles, his teeth crooked and yellowing. There are more sores on his face, and if she could see his arms they'd be as marked up as one of her canvases, tracks running along the inside of his elbow like it's all he has in place of blood.

His pupils are huge for the thin light of day, Rose can't remember for the life of her why she ever wanted him, and he speaks finally, says in a reedy drawl, "Hello, love. Miss me?"

She wrenches herself from his grasp, and he doesn't even fight back, releases her not out of giving up, but because he doesn't have the strength to hang on anymore. He's been up all night, why else would he be awake so early, and it shows in every inch of his body.

"Jimmy," she says in a whisper, and her voice sounds foreign to her as she speaks words she never imagined she would say. "Christ, Jimmy, what happened to you?" He's all angles, all skin and bones, and he laughs at that, laughs like he isn't dying, like he _can_ laugh because he's winning some grand game that only he's playing.

"Nothing, darling. Just haven't seen you in a while, is all." He's still grinning from ear to ear, and she moves away as the light turns green, looks back and sees him already moved back onto his girl, and even she looks worse for the wear when he gets close. She wonders why she was ever so afraid of him, why she was so frightened of what he signified to her.

It's like when she was a child, cowering behind her mother's legs when the buildings put out skeletons for Halloween, and she looked at them when she grew up and realized it wasn't scary after all, was a nothing monster. She was made of bones too, but she had muscles and skin and a heart that was beating, she was still undeniably, viciously _alive_.

She realizes now, at last, as she watches him from across the street, though for him it may as well be from across an ocean, that she can only feel pity for something so unbearably empty.

She actually eats her food once she gets back up to her flat, the memory of Jimmy burning onto her brain, and Jackie finally rolls out of bed and makes herself tea in the kitchen.

She doesn't say a word, simply hugs Rose for good luck and waves out the door as she grabs her purse on the way out.

The tube is crowded by the time she gets on, filled with every walk of life imaginable, and Rose huddles in the corner of the car because she found a spot, and she is not going to give it up. The train shuttles through the tunnels, the yellow lights from the walls blinking through the grimy windows, and a man next to her leers a little bit. He's dressed nicely, suit and tie, and Rose glares at him, just the way Jackie taught her when she was fifteen. She smiles when he cowers and moves away.

When the mechanical voice comes over the system, announcing her stop, she half-runs out, tripping a little over her heels in her haste to leave. She glances down at the directions she scribbled on the back of one of Jackie's grocery lists, walks out onto the street and begins making her way there.

It's warmer now than it was before, but only barely; the sun hasn't reached the highest point in the sky just yet. There are certainly more people on the streets, businessmen and women striding to work in expensive, tailored clothing. They're all grey and black and white, and Rose stands out in her flowery pink dress and yellow kitten heels.

The building is in a posher part of London, certainly, she can tell by the way the people speak and move and even carry themselves when they're only just standing still. She straightens her spine, walks with more purpose, tries her hardest to look like she belongs there. By the time she reaches the front doors, she almost believes it herself.

But not quite.

They direct her to the fourth floor, and she follows someone just walking into the lift, presses the number and listens to the tinkling music playing softly from the speakers. The doors open, sliding like the gates at the Colosseum, and Rose is about to fight the lions on her own now.

She takes a deep breath, steels herself, and walks over to the reception desk.

She waits to the sound of airplanes soaring by, flying lower and lower in the sky.

* * *

It's almost eight, and the days are getting shorter, the sunset already done and the moon brightening as time passes in a haze.

She paces in her bedroom anxiously, glancing down at the phones on her bed every few minutes. She's managed to scrounge up her mobile, the landline, and even Jackie's phone (_just in case, she insisted when she took it_), and she glares at them now, willing one to ring.

They told her after the interview was over that they would call in "a couple of days." It's been four, so naturally Rose is panicking.

She thinks she did well enough, considering her resume was fairly light. She has only ever worked at Henrik's and another shop before that, and her educational background is less than stellar, but she thought she had a shot when the interviewer went quiet when looking at her pieces.

She made sure to mention that she is self-taught, as Smith had advised her that sometimes people in the industry find that kind of raw talent impressive, and the interviewer clicked his tongue in appreciation.

But now it's been four days, and she hasn't heard so much as a word.

It's been the longest four days of her life for reasons besides that of course. If he were here it wouldn't seem so bad, but unlike the last time he almost broke off all contact she can't bring herself to go back to Mickey and Shireen and pretend everything is okay. It isn't.

And she would feel a whole lot better if someone would just-

Her mobile blares out it's ringtone, buzzing on the pink bedspread chaotically, and Rose scrambles for the phone, flips it open and says breathlessly into the speaker, "Hello, Rose Tyler speaking."

The man is talking on the other end, and Rose strains to hear him, but she can't because of the static in the background, so she has to say, "I'm sorry, what?" several times before she understands him.

"I said, you're hired for the internship position, Miss Tyler, congratulations. Can you start on Monday?"

She blinks, swallows, nods her head and absently agrees that yes, she can start on Monday, that would be fine, thank you so much for calling. As soon as she hangs up, she throws the phone back on her bed and continues pacing.

She watches as the sun sinks lower into the sky and smiles at the sight. She should probably tell her mum about the good news. She feels proud of herself, if a little empty from not being able to tell the person responsible.

(_Oh, the places you'll go, he said to her after one of her lessons, had smiled wide and happy and carefree, and when she smiled in return she had felt like it could be true._)

She grabs Jackie's phone from her bed, bursts out of her room to tell her what happened, and stops short in the hall.

She can hear the blood pumping in her ears, her heartbeat loud and rhythmic, and everything comes into focus, sharp and clear, not slowing down so much as becoming more certain. Her mother isn't home, but the flat isn't empty either.

"Doctor."

He stands in the middle of the living room, looking like he was just about to sit down on the floral couch, and he straightens up again as she stares in shock. The moonlight streaming in through the curtains makes him look like something different. He looks younger, softer, more vulnerable, and it seems that restless wind could break him, scatter him around the room like so many stars.

She realizes that part of the difference is he isn't wearing his jacket; without it he doesn't seem so sure of himself. Like Samson, his strength in a garment, an accessory, so easily taken away, yet he let go of it on his own. He doesn't look like the Doctor without it, and she wonders if this means she should call him by name.

He's the first to break the silence (he always is). "Rose." His voice is hoarse, it rumbles and rasps over the word, and when he says her name like that he says it like it's something precious, like a prayer, reverent and quiet.

She shifts from one foot to the other, never taking her eyes away from his, but he can't quite meet her halfway, his eyes dart around the room, unable to settle. "What are you doing here?"

"I thought it was obvious. Should I explain?"

"Don't get smart, just tell me." That comes out harsher than she intends, and he flinches a little, not because of her words, but because he seems to realize what he did more completely. He understands, all at once, she can see the connection clicking into place in his mind. She feels satisfied.

"I'm here to be friends again." He looks so hopeful, she almost breaks, but instead she scoffs a little, turns her head so that she doesn't have to see him when she speaks.

"I think it's a little late for that." She's walking away, and later she'll be glad that there are no cars on the street, no parties in the building, because she barely hears what he says next as it is.

"I read it." She stops, turns her head slightly, and he takes that as her allowing him to continue. "I read your book. Only took me a few days. I don't know why I didn't just read it months ago, for the life of me, I don't know why I didn't just read it."

She swallows the lump that's formed suddenly in her throat, and turns to face him head-on. "So?"

"So you know where this is going already." He shifts his weight slightly, takes a step forward, then back. "I wasn't sure if you wanted to go somewhere else, get some fresh air-"

"No," she interrupts tersely, "no, I'd rather you do this here. I'd rather not have every cabbie in the city think all I do is cry when I go home." This time when he flinches, she feels a little guilty. She thinks she's not the only one who would rather forget those times.

"Okay," he acquiesces, moves to sit down again but stands instead. He gestures to the couch, signaling for her to sit, and she reluctantly obeys, folds her arms across her body and lifts an eyebrow skeptically.

"For the record," he says, pointing to his temple, and of course he still has to be so impressive, even now, "that book would've only taken me a few hours, but I was reading between patients."

"So what changed your mind about it?"

He heaves out a breath, shakes his head and smiles ruefully. "I s'pose I should start at the beginning. That always seems like the most appropriate place to begin. I had a speech prepared, but I left it at home." He pauses, and when she remains silent he coughs uncomfortably. "Not a good joke then, yeah?"

"No, it wasn't."

"Then I'll start where it starts." He loosens his limbs, rolls his shoulders, as if preparing himself for a fight, which, she supposes, he is. "This is going to take a while."

"Go on, then." She waits, looking up at him expectantly, and he sighs in response.

"I agreed to go on that trip because I was planning on leaving anyway." At her gaping, he holds his hands up in defense. "You know as well as I do why I would want to do that. I still wanted to wanted you to be happy, even if it wasn't for the right reasons, so I wanted to help you however I could before I did something I'd regret. An' I didn't mean to do what I did, I really, really didn't. That's not to say that it was on accident, but I didn't take you to Scotland to sleep with you. I didn't. But I- I don't know. I suppose thought that I wouldn't ever actually lose control like that, do exactly what I told myself I wouldn't do.

"I'd misjudged everything about you and me before that though, so I don't know why I was so surprised when I misjudged how possessive I am." (_she noticed that, too, even before Scotland, when men would look at her on the street with too-wide eyes, and he would take her hand or put his arm around her waist, smile at her and glare at anyone who passed_), "I was happy that you were making friends, but I was also angry that you were moving on. I was angry that I couldn't go out and have fun the way you wanted me to, I was angry that Joseph was better for you than me, and mostly I was angry that even though I was angry I wanted you in a way that I shouldn't have in the first place.

"So you were there, dark room, moonlight, tight dress, and you were looking at me like you wanted me too, and I stopped thinking, completely and totally.

"Of course, the next day I woke up before you did," (she could remember him leaving, feel his weight pull off the bed and his hand brushing her cheek like a man preparing for war, already saying goodbye). "It was like my brain was making up for lost time. I was happy, happier than I'd ever been, but I knew every single reason why it wouldn't work with perfect clarity, it was all laid out like a map." (_like veins, her pulse, her beating heart_). "I was older, I was wrong, I was _broken_. I couldn't control myself, so I was the one who had to suffer the consequences."

"So you left."

He nods, swallowing, his Adam's apple moving along his throat. "Yeah. I left. I didn't expect you to say what you did, but I'm stubborn, I know. I left because I really thought you would forget, move on, you'd be better in the long run. Of course, Jack practically started crying over the phone when I told him, he just kept shouting, 'You were perfect together!' and then wailing a bit more." His voice softens with the next words, he can't look at her. "My dad was scary, how angry he was. He told me I was being an idiot, except in more explicit language. They worked at it all week."

"But you still didn't listen. So what changed your mind?"

He actually laughs, and she almost wants to cry a little bit. She never expected to hear that again. "Jackie came by." When she gapes, he laughs once more. "I was shocked too. She found out my address somehow and invited herself in for tea. She told me to go back and apologize, that she knew that I wanted to stay as much as you wanted me to stay, and that if I didn't I would have her to deal with."

Rose rests her head in her hands, mutters to herself.

"What did you say?"

"Of course she would."

He chuckles. "She told me that I needed to go back if I wanted you to be happy. I kept telling her, 'No, don't you get it? Don't you get what I did to your daughter?' I just kept saying that it had only been a week, that she just had to give you time, but she just kept replying that she'd rather not give her daughter more time to grieve if she could fix it sooner rather than later. She said, 'Read her book.' I didn't know how she knew about that, figured you must've told her. But mostly what she said to make me come here was something Jack and my dad had already told me, what I refused to believe because it was coming from people who loved me more than you. But here was your mum, the woman who raised you, and she was telling me that you wouldn't move on because you loved me. That I made you happy."

"And?"

"And I read the book. And of course even before you met me you had a thing for older men, I mean, how old was Jimmy when you ran off with him? Nineteen? Twenty? So of course your favorite book is about a grown man falling in love with the girl he sends to school. I couldn't bloody believe it. An entire book about how a relationship with a massive age difference, including the fact that the man originally only wants to help her succeed in her education, actually ends up working by the end. Because she loves him. _Jane Eyre_ did that, too, but I always hated Rochester, so I didn't care. But your book, it stuck."

"So?"

"So I finished it and sat in my flat for about five minutes before I moved. And then when I moved, I _ran_." He's getting excited, moving with bigger gestures, and he sits down on the chair across from the couch that no one uses. "It was like something was screaming at me to go, God or fate or the universe, whatever you want to call it, I had to get here and see you. Of course, Jackie opened the door, and she just told me to wait out here. An' here I am."

She waits a beat, but he doesn't continue."So is that it then?" He furrows his brow. "I got the job at Torchwood, you know. Just now."

He grins, the same wide one as before. "Rose! That's fantastic!"

"So are you going to leave now? You said you were gonna leave once you'd helped me like you said you would, that you were no good for me. So do you think that? Are you gonna stay or go?"

He falters, looks at her with a hopeful expression. "I was gonna stay. If you want."

She tries to keep herself from smiling at that, but fails just a bit. "I didn't hear an apology anywhere in there."

He smirks in return, and it's a bit like old times. "I thought it was implied, but if you really need to hear it, then yeah. I'm sorry for leaving. I'm sorry that I got you all mixed-up in my own problems and then acted like you were the crazy one. I'm just sorry."

"So that's it? There's nothing else you want to say? Any last details, any confessions that should've been made a week ago?"

He drops his head, looks up with a bit of a plea in his eyes. "Does it really need saying?"

"No, I suppose not. I'll just wait though." She smiles, standing with her hands folded behind her back, and she can see the light in his eyes, the blue as tumultuous as a storm.

He moves towards her, taking her hands in his. Lines up his boots against her toes and leans in close, his eyes inches from hers, his mouth just brushing the corner of her lips. She shivers at the contact.

He breathes in softly, air passing from her lungs to his, and he tilts her chin up with his fingers, kisses her closed eyelids.

"Rose," he murmurs softly against her skin. "I love you." He says the words like they are foreign and beautiful on his tongue, a language he can't translate. "_I love you_."

When she opens her eyes, she can still see his touch, blue-green and sparkling, dancing across her sight like the stars.

This time when he moves towards her it's less uncertain, less chaotic. When he finally presses his lips to hers it's soft, delicate, a feather-light touch, and he feels both different and exactly the same.

And this is her dream, from the very beginning (from _her_ very beginning), isn't it? Because her cornstalk hair, her long eyelashes look golden under the yellow light. When her arms wrap around his broad shoulders and cling to the thin material of his jumper they feel lighter than air, hollow bird bones and wings, growing right through, and his hands are large and warm on her slender waist.

He pulls back to gauge her reaction, and she wonders if he always tastes like strawberries. She walks closer, touches her toes to his black shoes. Shuts her eyes. Whispers his name, his real name, and he inhales in response, a great shuddering breath, like coming up for air. Closes the space between them again, like everything it was before (and will be after).

The blackbird sings on the windowsill, and this is everything and nothing she imagined, he is a paradox. Still drowning with a stranglehold on life, a doctor that stays with those he's already healed, and she knows that he loves her, loves her loves her _loves her_, like a man without a compass loves the stars and the sea, like a blind man loves the warmth of the light.

Like death loves only the most beautiful flowers, blooming wild and gorgeous in the sun.

.

.

.

"for you hair was full of roses, and my flesh was full of thorns."

.

.

.

"all the stars are abloom with flowers."

.

.

.

"-listen, there's a hell  
of a good universe next door; let's go."

* * *

A/N: The quotes are from, in order, "La Gitana" by Aleister Crowley, _The Little Prince_ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and "pity this monster, manunkind," by e. e. cummings.

I've decided to cut out the epilogue. I'm sorry if anyone was really relying on having one, but I tried writing it three separate ways, and every time it came off sounding like a PSA. Stopping here just felt more in sync with the way I've been writing, and my favorite stories are the kinds that are open-ended, but still point to the ending in a way that says "this is how it will be, but you have to fill in the blanks."

(And they all live happily ever after.)

I may do more within this universe later in the year, like maybe a one-shot from the Doctor's perspective, or some post-story fluff, but right now this is all there is.

So, that's it. I guess we've reached the end. I just want to thank my family and friends, the Academy, and God. Except I really want to thank all of you, fabulous readers. Your reviews, your follows and favorites, and your silent support have gone a long way toward me finishing this. So thanks. Really. It's been fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.


End file.
